General

I baked some cookies this afternoon for tomorrow’s MOMS club cookie swap. They’re Andes Candies cookies. I couldn’t find my recipe in any of my cookbooks, but the internet is a wonderful thing – here they are. I ended up with 7 1/2 dozen instead of the 6 I was supposed to have. Oh, darn.

And they are delicious.

This is only the first of many holiday baking projects over the next three weeks. I can’t decide whether to hide my scale until January or actually try to fit in a little extra exercise. (As if toting a 20+ pound toddler and chasing after her all day isn’t exercise?)

How exactly would it happen that I put in a load of colorful baby clothes – all of which have been washed before – and I toss in a color-catcher sheet just to be safe, and wash it in icy cold water…and wind up with a lily-white color-catcher sheet and baby clothes that are more colorful than they were when they went in the wash?!? (Here’s hoping a second wash of the damaged items with some oxyclean helps.)

And why, exactly, on the first night in two months that Carrie finally sleeps through the night again, am I stupid enough to stay up until midnight and then unfortunate enough to wake up from a nightmare at six? Am I destined to never have a full eight hours of sleep again? (Although, I must admit, that six straight hours was better than my usual interrupted eight, and I feel pretty rested.)

I got an early birthday present today! Denis had absconded with my original iPod for his daily commute, so he got me a replacement. It’s actually technically a joint gift with my grandparents: when I was a baby, my dad’s parents gave me a savings bond, which – since I’m turning 30 – has come to full maturity. So he decided to use that towards the iPod and have the rest be his birthday present to me. (He did do this with my approval, since it was my savings bond!)

I do feel a tiny bit guilty about having an expensive new toy, but…it’s so shiny. And perfect. And small.

Plus, it can display photos.

Lisa has hooked me into making fancy cakes for various occasions. (I’m not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, mind you.) So when she suggested making turkey cakes for Thanksgiving, well I just jumped at the chance to learn how to use a star tip!

So, what do you think? My family thought it was totally hysterical that the turkey was sitting in a roasting pan, especially since I brought it in all covered with foil. Most people were afraid to cut a piece off, but they must have enjoyed it, because when we went back to my grandmother’s house for leftovers this evening the cake was nearly gone!

Denis thought I was nuts, though, because in addition to the cake I baked four pumpkin pies – per my grandmother’s request. (After all, there were almost 30 people there.) But three of those pies are completely gone, so we all managed to do our part! I’ll admit here on the internet that I totally cheated on the pies, too. I normally make pie crust from scratch, but the thought of making four pies worth of crust was not really all that appealing…so I bought Mrs. Smith’s frozen crusts. They were tasty. Tasty enough that I might just not bother making pie crusts ever again.

After all, who has time to make a cake and turn out perfect pie crusts too?

We had a slight problem with one of the batches of custom photocard thank you notes, and we didn’t get them until Wednesday. However, they’re now all written out and will go out in the mail tomorrow. I feel a little guilty that it’s been three weeks since the party, even though it’s not my fault the cards came so late. But, *happy dance*, they’re all done!

Before I left the workforce to raise my child, I would have told you that Mondays were so hard because it sucked to have to go back to work after not working for the whole weekend.

But now I don’t work outside the home, and I don’t have a weekend away from being a mom, so why are Mondays still so hard? Even Carrie finds Mondays hard, protesting her nap and generally being cranky all day. Today seemed particularly difficult, probably because I played hookey for much of Saturday.

Mondays just suck. I’m glad it’s almost Tuesday.

Have you ever had a day where all you planned to do was run one errand, and then somehow it was night and you had been out all day? My mom, Carrie and I were just going to one of the (not so) local yarn shops to pick up three little ladybug buttons I had ordered for Carrie’s ladybug sweater. Of course, I bought more than the buttons: two pattern books and one skein of yarn to swatch.

By then it was lunchtime, so we went out for lunch, and Denis met us there.

We decided to send Carrie home with Denis so we could run a couple more small errands – Babies ‘R’ Us and JoAnn’s. My mom needed a shower gift and I needed yellow thread.

When all was said and done, we had to bring dinner home since we were out so late! And I now have the patterns, fabric and notions to make two sets of pajamas and a Christmas dress for Carrie, patterns for clothes for her doll, a set of kids Thanksgiving dinnerware, and a Christmas gift for Carrie. I did feel a little guilty for abandoning Carrie and Denis for much of the day, but it was a lot of fun to go shopping without leaving a trail of goldfish crackers and hearing comments about my shrieking daughter everywhere I went.

Well, we all know that going grocery shopping on an empty stomach is bad, right? Apparently, going on too little sleep is also a bad idea. I went with a list that had four (4) items on it. I came home with only two of those items, plus another five items. Oops. I guess impulse control is inversely proportional to sleepiness.

I think I’ve overcommitted myself this month, as I feel like I’ve been on the go non-stop all week, and there’s no end in sight. I’m really, really, tired.

Must go to bed.

Now.

I’m in the midst of writing thank you notes for Carrie’s birthday gifts. I feel badly that it takes me so long, because I don’t want people to think I don’t appreciate every last gift. But first I had to wait to get the custom photo cards we ordered, and now I’m hand-writing all of them – including the envelopes. I really don’t know how people manage to get them out as quickly as they do: I’ve received hand-written thank you notes (not on custom cards, though) within 2 days of giving someone a gift – at a party, so it’s not like that was the only thank you note they wrote. Am I just pathetically slow? It takes me an average of 10 minutes to write out each card, and that’s with (I’m blushing to admit this) “pre-writing” them on my computer – because it takes me at least that long to know what to say and how to phrase it, and I’d go through twice as many notecards if I just tried to write them cold.

I suck at writing thank you notes.

(And I feel especially guilty about these taking so long because not everyone was able to stay long enough at the parties to watch Carrie open her gifts, so we didn’t even get to thank them in person.)