Day 292 of 365

Every thing is a trade off.

You go away for the weekend and you wish you had stayed home. You stay home and wish you had gone away. You dust before vacuuming and then the vacuum kicks up more dust. You vacuum before dusting and then when you dust it winds up falling to the carpet. You spend your time making quilts for charity and wish you had spent time working on your daughter's quilt. You take pain medication to deal with the pain and it makes you feel ill. You don't take pain medication and you feel ill.

You decorate sugar cookies and they're cute. You try and be even cuter and put sparkly sugars on them and then they're too sweet.

After decorating last night with a follow up 5 a.m. decorating session this morning my new snowman cookies are kind of cute. I attempted to replicate what Bakerella did but I didn't have blue tic tacs, orange chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, or snowflake candies. So I used what I had - icing and colored sugars. I've never used sparkly sugars before and now I know why. They make the cookie just too darn sweet! Granted, it was 7 in the morning when I taste tested but it stopped me from eating any more for sure.

Anyone eating one of these on tomorrow's treat day will be guaranteed a major sugar rush.

Day 291 of 365

Ever since we were first married, I longed for a baking center. In every rental apartment and house we've lived in I've attempted to create one. A place to keep all my ingredients. A place to keep my mixer without having to take it out every time I've needed it.

When we moved into this house years ago, I was able to officially set up that baking center. It's just a kitchen cabinet next to the refrigerator, but it's brimming with all those necessities for baking. My KitchenAid mixer is housed on the counter right below. As I'm mixing up something in the mixer all I have to do is pull the ingredient out of the cabinet, measure it, and put it right back. Super easy clean up.

I'm so appreciative to have that cabinet. It's a time saver and a kitchen clean-up helper. I'm also so appreciate of my mixer, especially at this time of year.

Today's total: 
*Three loaves of zucchini bread from our garden's zucchini. (I had shredded and frozen it.)
*Four loaves of pumpkin bread from our garden's pumpkin. (I had cooked up the pumpkin and froze it, too.)
*A couple more dozen Christmas cookies. Tuesday is treat day at work and I'm making a version of those snowman cookies I made on Day 286. But thanks to how Bakerella decorated her snowmen my  new batch should be a hipper, cooler looking version. (I hope.)
*A few snowglobe cookies. My plan was to use them to make the tutorial for this upcoming week, but I ran out of time. I need to perfect them a little more, anyway. (I need to find better snowman than the ones I found at the craft store. I added a bit of black food coloring for eyes on one of them, but why would they make sugar snowman without eyes?)