The Reindeer Keeper

There's something both relaxing and exciting about cutting out cookies. It might be the anticipation after making and then refrigerating the cookie dough. Then waiting for it to be ready.  I use the same recipe when cutting out cookies. I found it years ago in the December, 1982 issue of Ladies' Home Journal with Drew Barrymore when she was a little girl on the cover. The recipe was included in a section highlighting favorite Cookie Recipes from 'Superstars.' The recipe I use is Dolly Parton's Christmas Sugar Cookies. I still have my copy of that issue. I go to the cupboard and bring the magazine out every time I make those cookies. The page the recipe is on is smeared with flour as well as grease stains from butter and remains of the dough itself. It's also sprinkled with love as that page has bought joy and fun and precious memories over the years. I really don't need to get the magazine out and turn to page 95 because I know the recipe by heart. I get the...

I loved it when the Sears Wish Book came in the mail. I'd spend lots of time going through the toy section over and over again. Eventually I'd mark everything I hoped Santa Claus would bring me and then point  out to my mother which ones I liked the most; which ones I really, really hoped to find under the Christmas tree. Besides the Sears Wish Book, there was another catalog that came in the mail before Christmas that I really, really liked It wasn't as glitzy or jam packed with pages chuck full of toys and dolls and doll beds and doll clothes and stuffed animals and games and bikes and on and on and on yet I'd get so excited to look through the pages of that catalog-the Miles Kimball Christmas Catalog. I never had to share that catalog with my older brother like I did the Sears Wish Book because he had no interest in it so I was able to sit at my desk in my bedroom and go through it over and over again. I always found things that I considered little treasures, along w...