Deck the halls

..or at least the cookies. =)  I had a meeting down in Austin today, and got out early enough to run a couple of errands before I had to head home.  Stop number one was at World Market, since I was just about out of Andes Peppermint Crunch bits after baking cookies last night.  Central Market had them the past couple years, but I haven't seen them there this year, even though there are plenty of other holiday items out.  So I did some searching online to see where I might get them, and was successful in purchasing several bags this afternoon.

My other stop was at my awesome local baking supply shop, Make it Sweet.  I was reading the December issue of Bon Appetit over the weekend, and there's a great cookie article in there from the wonderful Dorie Greenspan.  The recipe for Speculoos Buttons is high on my list of holiday recipes to try, and I was inspired to search out some interested sugars to use for decorating.  It's hard to tell from my picture, but I found pearlized sparkling sugar in assorted colors--it looks really neat.  The great thing is that Make it Sweet has all sorts of sprinkles, etc. available in bulk, so I was able to try out several without spending a lot of money.