Baker's Baking Fail and a Very Muppet Tale

Lately I feel like all my posts are just excuses. This is going to be the longest excuse ever as to why I haven't been blogging as frequently as I'd like.

This has been the longest week ever. Let's start at the very beginning. (I hear it's a very good place to start)

Last Saturday I went home early from work. I was sick. I was So. Sick. I felt like I'd been run over by a train, then a semi truck then a tricycle. I got off work at 4:30 and was home and in bed by 5:00. I slept for 17 hours, woke up and moved to the couch for another 14 hours then went back to bed for an additional 8.

I have a picture of how I looked at the end of all that... but the Internet is forever and I'm far too prideful to post that picture. Just take a cross between Eeyore and Medusa and you've just about got it right.

Once I got back to coherent livability, I realized that I had one day to make all my Christmas treats. I wanted to take them to work on Wednesday and I wouldn't have time on Tuesday. So around 5:00 in the evening I got started. Note for future reference: Make sure you have everything you need before you start a baking tirade. 

I got the brownies baked- no problem. Went to make the sugar cookies and realized I was pretty much out of sugar and flour. Ummm... those are kind of essential in cookies. So I made a quick run to the store and grabbed much more than I would need- but just to be safe.

I got home and mixed up my mom's recipe for sugar cookies. Now, I have helped my mom make sugar cookies 10,000 times during my lifetime. But I've only ever made the dough twice before and this was my first time without adult supervision. The dough turned out fine- but I rolled it waaaaay too thin so they turned out to be more sugar crisps than sugar cookies. That is... the ones that didn't break apart when I scooped them up. Sigh... fine. Enough of them stayed intact to carry on. 

Only after I baked them did I realize I didn't have the stuff I needed to make frosting D'oh! So... once again, back to the store I went. Sigh...

These are actually last year's cookies that I dropped on the way out the door. But take away the snowman Oreos and add Holiday Chocolate chip cookies and they're basically the same.

Moving on to the chocolate chip cookies. I have made these a hundred thousand times- half of those in this year alone. I follow the recipe that my mom has used all my life. I have since tweaked the recipe one teeny tiny bit though to make it a weensy bit better. Well, I don't know where my mind was- but I tweaked the recipe totally wrong. They turned out flat flat flat. They looked like a dog who'd been starved and you could see its ribs poking through. You could count the chocolate chips in every cookie. They were ugly! (incidentally, they tasted just fine and I took them to work on Tuesday and got a ton of compliments even though they were ugly, scrawny dog cookies)

While those were baking, I sat down to start decorating the sugar cookies. I also put the movie Babes in Toyland to play on my iPad while I worked. Apparently that's all the multitasking I could do because while singing along with the movie and icing cookies, I totally forgot there were still cookies in the oven. So I made a batch of chocolate chip charcoal briquettes. You'd think this was my first time in a kitchen. Geez.

After that I gave up for the day. I got off work at 10 pm on Tuesday and had to be back at 7 am on Wednesday- but I was determined to take pretty chocolate chip cookies. So I got home and whipped up another batch- this time using the correct recipe. While they baked I cut and decorated the brownies. I put the trays together and crashed sometime between midnight and one.

I love compliments. I'm so vain. I know. But I love it when people tell me how yummy my treats are. So I was happily receiving compliments all day for the treats I took to work. I had someone from corporate shadowing me for part of the day and it always seems that when I'm the busiest, the weirdest things come up. I was so discombobulated and kerbobbled I didn't know which end was up.

Thursday I was stupid and floopy for much different reasons that I don't want to talk about. I stayed an hour and a half past my shift because I had to finish my work newsletter. My sister was coming in to town a day earlier than I'd planned and my house looked like it'd been put through a blender. Seriously- frosting on the walls and everything. Luckily, my sister loves me no matter how messy my kitchen is. I had a Christmas party at church that night to go to, then I had to come home and meet my sister to let her in my house and then I totally ditched her and went to my book club where I learned that you should always ask your date his feelings about dinosaurs and the theory of evolution. Noted.

When I got home at one in the morning-, Kim had fallen asleep on the couch even though she usually sleeps in my room when she visits. I'd washed my sheets for her so I went in my room to make my bed and go to sleep. I got a little over exuberant with the quilt and somehow knocked the light fixture cover off the ceiling and it crashed and shattered on the bed. [facepalm] At one in the morning I couldn't get out my vacuum because that is rude to the people downstairs. So I cleaned it up the best I could with my hands (only one small slice in the finger) and a lint roller to get the shards.

In the morning I got out the vacuum to get any little bits I may have missed on the floor and my vacuum promptly sucked up a plastic headband that had been kicked under the bed and broke the vacuum. Gah!!!

My sister and I took our aunt to lunch and then we went shopping. If Kim could be a professional shopper, I think she would. She is the most talented marathon shopper I've ever met. I was done after the second store. That night we met up with my friends Ana and Christina and saw the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. I was pretty excited to see Santino Fontana perform... you know, the voice of Prince Hans. But to be perfectly honest, I was so ridiculously excited to see the Sesame Street Muppets. 

 

I have never denied that I am just an overgrown five year old. I may or may not have cried when Big Bird walked out on the stage. And I giggled every time Grover was part of the show. Aside from Kermit the Frog, Grover Monster is my favorite Muppet. The Monster at the End of This Book is my all time favorite kids book. The highlight of the night though was the Count and the Organist doing the 12 days of Christmas. I can't even explain it... when it comes out on video... just watch it. It was fantastic!

Saturday I sent my sister home and spent the day procrastinating doing my lesson for Relief Society. I've known for two months that it was my weekend to teach and yet still had never even cracked open the book to see the topic. I just kept finding reasons not to. Finally when I did... ya wanna know the topic? Personal Responsibility and Self Reliance. Yeah... holding yourself accountable for being a crap-head procrastinator. 

But- the lesson went well. There was lots of participation and I came home and crashed in front of a Hobbit marathon. I'd say tomorrow is another crash day- but I only have two days to prepare for Christmas because I work all the rest of them.

Oh heaven help me.