Just how gorgeous are these shoes? Courtnay wore them to work today, and I was insanely jealous of her new kicks. But, I have to admit, on a day when the high is 4 degrees, I'm more apt to show up in my converse than something like this. I just can't work up that kind of style at 7 a.m. on freezing mornings like today. But at night? Yeah baby. I could sport those.

Look what London brought into work today! She baked four different varieties of cookies, and then packaged them up in these cute little boxes. And man, were those cookies good. (We all shared them. I did not eat the entire box. But I probably could have.)

Today I had a photo shoot with a family out on a fenced-in golf course, which was great because the dogs could run around free, and they were such a happy pair. They were two Bernese Mountain Dogs, and they were the sweetest, most well behaved girls. This is one of them (either Shasta or Luna -- I have a hard time telling them apart) rolling in the snow. I love her snow-covered snout. It looks like she got into a box of powdered donuts.

Tonight was the annual girls' Christmas party at Courtnay's. And look how happy the hostess is! Michiela bought us each an animal winter hat and Courtnay got the Panda bear. Nan, swigging beer in the background, is the sly fox. But the best hat was for Colleen, who was the rabbit (because she's the best breeder. Ha!) The hats are really fun. Now if I can just convince Memphis that my squirrel hat is not her toy...

Tonight I caught Andrew Bird playing one of his weekend church shows at St. Mark's. The show was fine. Good. Whatever. You know what it was? FREEZING. We had to wait outside for about 30 minutes before being let in, and kids, it's cold out there. Like single-digit cold. And windy. And those old churches are drafty. I'm still warming up now, and I have been home for almost two hours and I have a computer and a golden retriever on my lap. And my toes are still cold. OK. Enough whining. If you want to see some more shots, they're here. But I have to tell you: Three instrumental songs by Andrew Bird all kinda look the same. You've been warned.

Today was long. Really, really long. So Jamie and I stopped at King's for happy hour and this delicious grilled cheese sandwich. It's amazing how a good grilled cheese can make everything better.

The cold weather has arrived. I woke up this morning and the paper said the high today would be 13 degrees and the low would be 12. And I looked outside at the thermometer, and it was 3 degrees. I wanted to take a photo that captured how freaking cold it is, so I stopped by Lake Harriett on my way into work. Oh. My. God. It was freezing with the wind coming off that water. The steam you see is the heat leaving the lake, which means not too much longer until it's iced over.Also, for all of my out-of-town readers, rumor has it there was high surf up on Lake Superior today, so the surfers were out. That's 2.5 hours north of here. Those people are insane.

Hey look, it's Margaret! When the news of "snowpacolypse" hit this morning, I texted Margaret to bring her camera to work so we could go shoot pictures of the snow on our lunch break. But, since we had planned it all out, the big flakes never came. Just lots of tiny flakes. Kinda like dandruff -- nothing you really want to shoot.We waited until about 3 pm, and then decided to head on out and see what we could get anyway. Which ended up being photos of each other. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to shoot some actual snow photos...