Welcome to my NIGHTMARE!!

So I am just ending my second trimester, which means I still have lots of energy most of the time! So here is me being super ambitious and wanting to be a super awesome saver at the same time, (dunt dudda duh) those are both positive attributes so how could anything go wrong with this plan?? That is how I started my Sunday afternoon, just finished church, heads in the clouds, this is going to be the PERFECT RELAXING project!!! You see it all started when me, in my naivety, decided that I would bake a million little Christmas shortbread cookies for all of my siblings, neighbors, and even a few extra to send up to Washington to impress the in laws with. (wink-wink). My most amazing Grandpa would make these and sew stockings for us every year! So I went to get his recipes in JUNE and decided I too would share the awesomeness of his homemade cookies with the world for Christmas (IN DECEMBER, if you didn't know) since it has been a long time since we have had the joy of those cookies hit our mouth!

So it begins...
I just recently watched the movie, Julie and Julia, I really enjoyed it all except the part near the end that made me say "what's up your butt Julia Child? Grouch" Anyways the movie is about a girl documenting on a blog her cooking as she cooks her way through Julia Child's cook book. So I felt inspired to document this huge task I was taking on...

Kitchen is spotless and supplies are out and organized! Even the butter!

• approximately 7 recipes
• baked in complete perfect relaxation
• start at 1:15 pm and finish sometime before I need to lay over and die from exhaustion (approx 5 hours give or take a few hours)
• bake said cookies and then bag them all into approx 47 bags.
• have a little faith that for this project my children will just let me work and be entertained all on there own
• and if everything turns out OK I will talk to the blog host (the oh so beautiful and talented Gina) about publishing the recipes and experience on my favorite and only used cooking blog, EAT YOUR VEGGIES.

Is that really too much to ask for??? Apparently I should have been asking this one question before starting it all...

• If you can COOK does that mean you can also BAKE??? What is the ratio of things that are burned and gross, to things that turn out perfect, that you have to meet to know if you can bake and that the probability of things sucking is low??
  

I am still irritated by the whole thing so lets make this short and sweet! Here is my story...

These Butter Pecan cookies actually turned out OK except I made them WAY TOO BIG!!

And don't these wreaths just look so beautiful! I had the joy of learning about a cookie press and putting tiny little cherries and pineapple on each one.

Which wasn't a big deal until they came out flat, and then the next batch I made bigger, all three batches just feel apart!! I think that I am missing an ingredient for that cookie because they just crumbled!!! You couldn't even pick up a piece to eat.

So by this point I was really frustrated with cookies so I decided to try my hand at Pound Cake! Which I have made successfully before, I might add. But this time I over filled the pans and something else, because the part that wasn't spilling out didn't even bake!!! EEERRRR!!!

So three and a half hours later, although my kids were great for me, the food was not!! I just had to walk away before I exploded!!! Not one thing went right! My plan was foiled and so now I have been driven to make little baggies of (dare I say it?) STORE BOUGHT COOKIES! Just know that although I didn't bake them with love they have been stuffed in baggies with love.

So today I finally cooled down enough to finish this post and clean the oven (so fun)! But I am still a little peeved, mainly because I really am craving POUND CAKE!! So anyone interested in hooking up a poor, sad, can only bake half the time, pregnant woman! I will be ever so grateful for some amazing not melted in my oven pound cake. Until then I will just have to keep smelling my Melaleuca Pound Cake Candle and be reminded of better years, like 2 years ago when I made pound cake, fudge, and pumpkin roll all successfully.