We'd Like to Politely Interrupt Your Baking Day with Snow!

So here it is - December 23 - and no cookies or goodies have yet been baked!!

Eeeeekkkkkk!

Slight panic attack on part because for some reason - (probably instilled in me by my mother who always made 10,000 times too many of any one treat yet still found the time to make about 50 different kinds of holiday goodies) - I feel this deep urge to be a baking Godess/Donna Reed at this time of year!

So after we woke up from our previous evening of fun at the family Christmas party (can you believe I didn't get one picture?!?!? Too bad too because it was A LOT of fun!) I was determined to get down to baking business. 

I quickly hammered out an ENORMOUS batch of fudge. 

Not sure why I felt I had to make fudge but I feel you just can't have Christmas without fudge. 

Then, it was on to chocolate covered peanut butter balls. I made these a few years back and absolutely loved them. This year, I made a TON! Shocking, right?!

Once the goodies were out of the way, it was REALLY time to get down to business.

Sugar cookie business.

Otherwise known as: "The Most Time Consuming Baking Activity Known to Mankind."

Think about it.

You have to make the dough. (You could buy it, but not as good.)

Chill the dough. Bring dough back to room temperature. (This takes time.)

Roll out the dough. (Call me crazy but I hate rolling out dough.)

Cut out the shapes! (yay!! fun part until you realize after you've used all the dough and you didn't do one Christmas tree cut-out which is your favorite. UGH!)

Bake cookies. (Careful, oh so careful not to undercook or overcook.)

Make the frosting. (Again, could buy but...)

Finally, finally, finally, it's time to decorate!!

nope. just kidding. not time yet....

No, its time to color all the frosting and put the frosting in little pipette bags (is that what they are called?) and you never have enough pipettes or bags or frosting to do all the colors you want to do.

And at this point, the thought of making more frosting or cleaning out a pipette bag is enough to send a kitchen aid mixer bowl through a plate glass window. 

For the record, haven't actually done the above but I have thought about it.

Vividly.

Moving on.

Pipettes are filled. Sprinkles are ready to rock.

It is finally, finally time for the good times to roll!

Only now it is 10 o'clock at night and you have a 100 cookies to frost and decorate.

Sound fun, right? 

On this particular day, with the above mentioned sugar cookie making regime staring me in the face, I knew in my heart of hearts I was not up to it. I didn't have the time or the energy and throw in two girls who wanted to eat the frosting and sprinkles, make HUGE messes, help, it was enough for me to leave Santa a rain check on his cookies. 

But a Christmas without sugar cookies is like a Christmas without presents, so I battled through and we got the dough made and the shapes cut and baked!! 

When it comes to making large numbers of sugar cookies, I've found it to be helpful - efficient, if you will - to run a pretty tight ship. Keep messes to a minimum. No eating dough or playing with the flour - god forbid you get some on the floor and have ANOTHER mess to pick up on top of the 10,000 dishes you are going to have to do when all this "fun" baking is over.

But this year, I let go.

I let go of picture perfect cookies. I let go of not spilling on the floor (kind of) and you know what?

We had a lot of fun.

The girls loved every single second. 

And even better, right in the middle of cookie decorating, we abandoned ship because it started DUMPING snow!

The most snow I have ever seen at our house.

It snowed and it snowed and it snowed some more. 

So we went outside and we played, 

and we played

we snow-angeled

and we played some more!

My favorite. I made a "track" in the snow in the shape of a heart and told Charlotte she was the train. She rain along that "track" choo-chooing her head off for what seemed like an hour!

Then she got cold.

And tired.

So she retired to the house.

Grace tried to lure her back out but Charlotte was done.

So Grace carried on out in the snow by herself. Happy as a clam.

And the cookies waited. 

Then Dad came home

and the real fun began!

A snowman was made.

Not sure what Grace thinks of him...

Memories made!

And the cookies?

Welllll, the cookies were eventually decorated. 

Large quantities of sprinkles were spilled and eaten.

Frosting was dripped and spread all about not to mention eaten.

Caught red-handed!

Mission accomplished.

Memories made!

Summer (not so) Lovin'

Anyone who knows me knows that cooking isn’t my biggest passion. When I was working as an attorney, I used to tell Court that “we needed a wife.” Meaning, we needed someone to prepare, cook and cleanup our meals for us. I didn’t like cooking to begin with - throw in cooking at the end of a looong day...nothing worse!

When I said goodbye to the practice of law and hello to mommyhood, I took it upon myself to step it up in the kitchen. There have been hits and misses, edible and inedible concoctions produced in my kitchen, but nonetheless, we have eaten relatively well.

In the last few weeks, my hatred towards food preparation has returned with a vengeance. I read blogs where the authors are delighted at the fresh produce at their local farmer’s market or their daily finds in their homegrown garden. I go to the farmer’s market and try to get excited but it is just stall after stall of...work...in my mind. Cleaning, cutting, prepping, planning, cooking...REPEAT! Three times a day EVERY.SINGLE.DAY.

I recently vocalized the return of my disdain to cooking with Court and he completely put it in perspective for me.

It is summer. It is harvest. Harvest is crazy and long. There are no weekends. There are no holidays. There are no breaks. There are no set hours. The work is dictated by the wind, the rain, the sun....THE PLANTS. And sometimes most often, the plants and the work, require working well into and past dinnertime.

And that my friends is why I strongly dislike cooking in the summer. I never know when he will be home. How do you prep and plan a meal that could be ready as early as 5:30 (wishful thinking) and as late as 7:30 or 8?! Throw in the fact that making a meal for two small kids who eat two bites and declare themselves done also makes you want to take a frying pan and bang it against the wall. So I do all this work, all this planning, all this grocery buying, all this cooking to virtually have no one eat anything. Personally, I hate eating dinner in the summer. It is always too hot. I’d rather eat an ice cream cone and call it a night. But, that’s not “healthy” and sitting and having proper meals together is a priority to us - regardless of the inconvenience. It is the only time of the day, and sometimes it is less than five minutes, that we are all together.

I have a handful of go-to quick meals...but they get old. I’ve tried some new things from Pinterest. But I’m exhausted of it all. And if I see one more blog post of someone making a blueberry pie from berries harvested from their backyard I think I might scream!