The snowman cookie jar

looks out of place with the autumn decorations. Sometime last year I read an idea in a children's magazine to celebrate the first snowfall with special cookies. The search began for a snowman cookie jar, I finally found one at a yardsale last spring. We dug him out, washed him and filled him up with snowball cookies on OCTOBER 1oth this year. Then we made note of the date of our first snowfall on the bottom of the cookie jar. Just last week we added another tradition. My children are all about tradition(and sweets!). On the night we have the first sub zero temps we celebrate with ice cream. Celebrating the snowfall and negative temps seems much better than dreading them.