I want to know what happens when the wind doesn't blow. Does the fossil fueled generators kick in to replace that lost generation? Can it do it as fast as the wind stops?

Hi John,

I was cruising around instructables and found the ikea light idea. Very cool btw, your photography is so good I clicked on something that led me to your site which is also really great. I found it interesting seeing that you lived in Germany as an American. I lived in Germany for a few years when my parents worked for the 3rd Armored Division and Army Corps of Engineers '87-'89. That's where I fell in love with photography. My first darkroom set up was bought there.

I started with my dad's old Pentax went to Canon Rebel before the digital switch to Nikon. However I also use the G!0--a really great camera. So compact yet just as good. Nice features on it too. Anyway I haven't read much on your site but your photography is absolutely beautiful--tell me you are working as a photographer!?

Lydia Bridges Kuennen
Coralville, Iowa (Lifestyle Photographer)

Lovely pictures again John and a fun read.

Wow! Guys, since going vegan a year-and-a-half ago, I haven't made sugar cookies (I'm a very, very avid baker). No good recipes! Well, I made these little wonders tonight, and they turned out fantastic! Thank you, THANK YOU for posting this recipe!

It might be useful to add that the margarine (I used earth balance sticks) should be @ room temperature, otherwise the sugar-creaming won't go so well. Also, the cream cheese shouldn't be ice cold.

I'll be posting my results on my blog! THANK YOU!

One wonders if the salt inspired the white-wash of the esteemed Peter Jackson's Moria scenes.

I have not tried these yet.. but my NON vegan daughter has been asking for sugar cookies... will be making this this week!

FYI, I keep Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks as a staple for baking... YES! it is vegan... works for me in breads, cakes, cookies, muffins and any other baked items we make. HTH.

Thanks John and Kristie for blessing us with your recipe. Happy New Year to all!

Susan
(1VeganMom, 1VeganTeacher)

I made these yesterday and will make them again soon. Sugar cookies have always been a frustrating experience but these turned out wonderful and since I used smaller cutters had about 80 or more. I think there are 40 or less today since no one can stop eating them. Thank you for sharing!

What great pictures of a wonderful adventure
Here's to a great 2010
Janice

Thanks, Jayson! It's been a very fun and eventful decade. Happy 2010!

John

Love the pics John. Happy New Year too!

The cookies turned out perfect! They are the best tasting too....:)

I am so grateful to have stumbled across your blog! I have found so many great inspirations that I am so thankful for! Not only do my boyfriend and I live in the Seattle area, but we are also vegans, hikers, and photographers.

Please keep all the posts coming! I have already shared your site with many of my friends

Have a great holiday season!

Wow, these are PERFECT VEGAN COOKIES! I am having a Holiday Cookies Exchange and these are what I made using star cut-outs! I cannot believe how easy they are to make. Love how easy it was to put the icing on too! I followed the recipe to a "T". My dough was perfect too. We used all organic ingredients. I used my food processor with a dough blade to blend all the ingredients. Then I rolled the dough out between 2 sheets of wax paper...so much easier! My 4 year old had a blast making these with me.

Just a tip...I have a juicer and rather than use unhealthy food coloring, we juiced spinach to make green icing and juiced a beet to make red icing...you only need 2 tablespoons of the juice to color the icing. I used less soy milk to compensate for the extra liquid from the vegetable juice.

My cookies turned out absolutely beautiful!

THANK YOU JOHN & KRISTIE!

As a fellow vegan and also a Northwesterner I am so pleased to have found your site! I found you by looking for vegan sugar cookies for my kids' homeschool group to make together and have now looked through almost all of your project posts! I'll be back after we're done with the cookies to see what else I can find! Enjoy your vacation...it is pouring here (shocking I know...) Kim

My daughter is severely allergic to milk and eggs. We've tried a ton of different cookie recipes. Today we tried your recipe and completely love the results! We're trying the icing with the next batch. Thank you so much!

Your cookies look amazing! My daughter has a milk protein allergy, so I have been looking for a good vegan recipe.

Hi Simba,

I believe the vegan cream cheese helps to keep the cookies moist, replacing the fat solids typically provided by butter. With the cream cheese, your teeth will sink through layers of slightly tender cookie, rather than snapping through a dense and brittle dough. You won't taste the cream cheese, if that is your concern.

John

Thanks for publishing this recipe. I just wanted to ask why does recipe use cream cheese? I ask because I am not a fan of cream cheese and also, I am unsure this particular brand is available in Canada. Is there something else I may use in lieu of the cream cheese. Please advise. Thanks!!!

love the leather couch in the background..

So far, so good. I will never go back to "normal" sugar cookies.

I made these cookies last year around Christmas and everyone loved them!! They were so surprised to find that they were vegan and one lady I worked with thought they were store bought because they looked so perfect. I will definitely be making these again! Thanks so much for sharing the recipe!

OH! I love this! I wanted to do a holiday cookie baking party with some of my son's friends and they're all little tykes around 18 months and some have food allergies and I was hoping to find a sugar cookie recipe they could all eat without getting rashes and I find this! These look so adorable and they're SAFE for them to eat! Thank you so much for posting this! Now we're going to have a messy kitchen full of happy toddlers!

Awesome story!

Maybe their version of cowboys and indians?

JUST what I was looking for! Many thanks!

Great looking place and chandelier. :) Just wandered here from Instructable. Keep up the good work!

The BEST cutout cookies ever! My dairy and egg allergic daughter and I make these for EVERY school holiday function and they are loved by all! Just finished a batch of ghosts, bats and pumpkins for Friday's Halloween party. Icing is great as well. I pass this along to everyone I can and my Vegan neighbors appreciate our annual cookie tray at Christmas time as well. THANK YOU!!!

Hi,

I work in the digital agency for Principal-Hayley, a collection of landmark hotels and conference centres:
http://www.principal-hayley.com/

We are currently reviewing relevant links on the web.

The link on your blog to the Hotel Russell currently points to the wrong website (an affiliate commission based company).

I would really appreciate it if you could update this link to:
http://www.principal-hayley.com/hotelrussell

Please could you let me know when this has been done?

Please feel free to drop me a call or an e-mail if you have any questions.

Many thanks,

Katie

Tel #: 020 7284 9702

These are absolutely wonderful. Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this with everyone. I cannot wait for more baking adventures from you guys :)

Thanks, Jayson! It was a great trip - hopefully I'll have a chance to finish posting the rest of the photos before 2010...

Congrats on the Wonderland circuit! I hope you're doing well.

John

the last pic is very stylized, very cool. Wonderful shots all around and it sounds like you two had a lot of fun.

Thanks, Michael! I'm sure the castle will still be there, whenever you decide to cross the pond and spend a couple days in Eastern Europe.

There are so many more photos I need to post! Hopefully I'll find some time this weekend to catch up.

John

Wow! That looks like an amazing place. Such history and granduer. Thanks for glimps into Malbork Castle that I will probably never get to see otherwise.

Awesome photos and great story! We are headed up next weekend for a day trip to Robin. I know that sounds crazy, but I have done the Enchantments in a day! Thanks for sharing.

Sherri

Thank you for sharing your pictures of Belize!! We are visiting with family this month and I've been very unsure on some of the activites we should do, but your review and pictures really helped!

Thanks again,
Charron

PS your pictures are amazing! (you must be a professional) & I realy like your web site too.

Thanks, Jessica!

I was desperately looking for sequins, crystals or glitter to enhance the glove, but I didn't know the Polish words for these. Pity.

John

Hi Michael,

I'm sure you'll have a great trip! I hope the bugs will be much less of a problem this time of the year.

John

Hi Haezel,

Sorry, I don't have any vector art for the graphics. There's a link to the marquee art in the post (a high-res raster image). The side-art was purchased at Arcade Shop Amusements (http://www.arcadeshop.com/). It cost $134 for the pair at the time. Very high-quality print on durable vinyl stickers - worth every penny.

John

Hi Sonja,

There's nothing particular about the recipe. I believe Kristie used a supermarket cake mix and frosting. The bear-shaped pan was bought at Michaels.

John

Hi Keith,

I'm really enjoying the 5D! I can capture a much wider range of light, the interface is great, and the detail in 21 megapixels is amazing (although the size of the images is taking a toll on my hard drive!).

I sold the 16-35 (for more than Kristie paid for it - gotta love the way lenses hold their value!), and got Canon's 14mm II instead. The 16-35 was fine, but I found it overlapped too much with the 24-105. Whenever I used the 16-35, I always had it set on 16 - so the zoom was useless. I figured I should get a wide angle that was truly wide and with better optics. I'm very happy with the 14!

Telephotos are fun. I love using my 70-300, although I wish I had another couple hundred mm, especially after switching to full-frame where I've lost the crop-factor.

John

Nice work on that sock-bandage! Very inventive! Kristie looks like she is making some sort of fashion statement/tribute to Michael Jackson. :) I also like the polish snail.

Great story, I am going up to the Robin's early September. I will bring a lot of DEET and lather up before I even get close to the waters. Hope the arm is healed up.

Gorgeous pics of Depeche Mode!

Wow John,

I don't know how I missed this post...I am very envious. As you say, a major step up in gear. Six or seven months in what is your feedback. Has it been worth the major step up in investment? Also is the 16-35 equivalent (in full frame) as the 10-22 on the Rebel Xt?

I've just invested in a Tamron 70-300mm to hopefully improve my people photography as being further away from people allows you to catch them being less self conscious.

Kind regards
Keith

Hi. Could you email me the recipe! SUPER CUTE!

Thanks.
Sonja Peterson
spete21@yahoo.com

John,

What an awesome project! I was wondering if you created the vector graphics or is it something I can find online. I would love to get a copy of it.

Thanks so much!
Haezel

Thank you very much for the comments, everyone!

Keith, I just finished my first novel on the iPhone using the Kindle app. It worked surprisingly well, and I look forward to reading my next book on it too. In the mountains, I know I won't have a carrier signal, so it's in airplane mode, during which the iPhone can run for days. While camping, it's handy for recalling notes on the route, viewing star maps, and reading books while trying to avoid mosquitoes!

John

Wow John,

what a story - However, the pinky shots towards the bottom of the page are absolutely worth it - they are fantastic.

The mozzies, though - OUCH!!!!

I'm intrigued - reading a book on the iPhone. Given its low battery life - how did that work out?

I'm anticipating a photo trip to Tuck and Robin and environs in late September, when (hopefully) the huckleberry leaves start turning red.

Your images here are probably the best I've seen, just using the Yahoo search engine to "google" Tuck and Robin.

The compositional skill here is tremendous, and the exposures are spot-on in a VERY difficult area to get both the shadows and highlights into any kind of order.

So, I have to give extensive kudos to the photographer; many of these are "wall hangers"

Larry

That Starbuck's VIA is good stuff. Wonderful shots as always. Love the mountain ranges and the goats! Sounds like a fun but strenuous trip.

Thunderstorms = adventure!

Here's to hoping the enchantments are relatively less buggy!

wow, those images are incredible! and i've always wanted to see mountain goats, what an experience! i wish i could see places like that myself but i'm not sure i have enough willpower to do so. plus, if that were my arm, each mosquito bite would be the size of a grapefruit and i'd probably need to be rushed to a hospital :) looks like netting is a necessity!

Thanks! That was a fun trip.

No hole. It's a reflection from my watch. I should have photoshopped it out.

John

Did you have a hole in your hat, John?

Great pics!

We might have to sacrifice a few great shots in order to safely make it down the Skykomish next year! :)

What John fails to mention is he was too busy taking pictures to paddle on some instances. His fiancee and I had to make up for his one handed, half-a**ed paddling. The sacrifices he makes to get a shot...:-P

Looks like a fun trip!

I think the "water drop on lens" photoshop effect was a nice touch as well.

I'm beginning to think everything you do feels like a scene from Star Trek. This is beyond nerdiness... You may need help.

I felt like we were a parade of mice being led to our doom by the Pied Piper.

John

Thanks Kristie for organizing such a fun day. John, the pics of us traipsing through the woods are hilarious. I felt like we were on some old episode of Star Trek (nerd alert).

How cool! Seeing the Orca's is definitely on my list of things to do this summer/fall. Nice pics John!

Looks Great! Keep it up!

Check out our blog for all of our home renovations.