The Up & Coming Magazine

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This is dedicated to my wonderful husband Ian Peters. Thank you for being the one to show me what love truly is. I love you more than anything in the entire world. Merry Christmas Ian.

As Claire sat in her living room one snowy afternoon a week before Christmas, she was unsure of what to get her boyfriend that year. Her boyfriend, Issac, never mentions anything specific that he wants as a gift, so Claire is always left waiting until the last minute to come up with an idea of what to get him. This happened on both his birthday and every year at Christmas, so then she always ended up buying him a gift that never felt right. But this year, she wanted things to be different, so she had been scouring the internet for the perfect gift for him and still hadn’t found anything. She browsed local department stores, small businesses, and even antique stores, but anything that she thought might be right, she still couldn’t find a gift for him.

Claire decided to call her grandma to see if they could come up with a gift idea together. Last year, Claire’s grandmother had suggested that she should knit him a scarf, but since Claire was never very good at knitting, that was an idea that fell through. This year, however, Claire’s grandma told her that she should bake Issac sugar cookies so that they could decorate them together, and Claire thought that was an excellent idea. Claire’s grandmother had a collection of old Christmas cookie cutters that came in various shapes like Christmas trees, snowmen, angels, and bells, so she knew baking cookies for Issac would be a wonderful experience for her this year.

After finishing her phone call with her grandmother, Claire put on her light blue peacoat, her gray mittens, her gray winter hat, and her tan Ugg boots, and she went to the local grocery store in search of the ingredients for the sugar cookies. Grocery shopping was something that she had always despised since childhood because grocery stores had always felt like a maze, and she never knew which aisles to look in for certain things.

Another thing that bothered her about grocery shopping was that she always seemed to see a lot of people she knew there who wanted to stop and have a chat with her. That’s the downside to living in a town like Maple Grove, where everyone knows everyone, making it impossible to shop for groceries without running into people she knows. On this visit to the store, she ran into her old high school geometry teacher, Mrs. Lyons, and she wanted to discuss how things had been with her cat, Pumpernickel. She also ran into her Aunt Mildred, who wanted to keep pinching her cheeks and telling her she can’t believe how grown up she has gotten. So, for Claire, going to the grocery store was never an easy task, but after about an hour and twenty minutes, she had finally been able to find everything she needed in order to bake the sugar cookies.

Once Claire got home from the store, she baked the cookies and made the red and green icing to decorate for them. She had also found red and green Christmas sprinkles for them at the store as well, and she knew Issac had always loved sugar cookies with sprinkles. Once Issac came home, he could smell the rich vanilla scent of the freshly baked cookies as soon as he walked through the door. He hugged Claire and said, “Claire, the cookies smell wonderful.” Claire smiled up at him and said, “I’m so glad you’re home, and I hope that you enjoy decorating the Christmas cookies that I baked for you.” Issac smiled, “I love spending time with you. This was a wonderful early Christmas gift from you, and I couldn’t ask for a better girlfriend than you.” Claire kissed him and said, “I love you, Issac. Merry Christmas.” Issac kissed her back and said, “Merry Christmas, Claire.”

This was written by our founder and editor-in-chief, Hanna Peters.