24 thoughts I had before 10 am.  1. Please tell me it's only 4am and that I can sleep for 2 more hours. 2. Seriously? How is it already 6? 3. Maybe if I put this pillow over my head, my girls will go back to sleep. 4. They can probably get breakfast by themselves, right? 5. Wait. Is that the sound of cereal hitting the kitchen floor? 6. Of course it's their favorite cereal. 7. I guess I'll wear this shirt. It doesn't have any icing on it. 8. Today is the day I'm going to finally clean out that storage closet. 9. AAAHH!! That cookie order is due tomorrow morning not next week! 10. Gosh, I hope I have butter. 11. I love you butter. Thank you for being there. 12. I can't remember what colors I need to mix. Let me just jump online and check... 13. And I'll just check Facebook real quick too. 14. Real quick? As if. 15. Facebook bugs me. 16. I really should just turn it off and get to making those cookies. 17. Seriously, what is Facebook's ...

My daughters are experimenting with "baking".  Basically they pull a lot of stuff out of the cupboards and try to convince me to use them all in a single recipe. Sometimes I let them mix their "own bowl" of "baking" while I'm secretly mixing actual ingredients in another bowl. And by "actual ingredients" I mean "ingredients that I can mix together without having a physical reaction." So...for example NOT pickles, Tobasco sauce and peach preserves.

  Fair warning -- this post if full of all kinds of unsolicited advice. Proceed with caution. Icing consistency is kind of a big deal. It can create the perfect dimension and texture if you get it right or dash all your cookie icing dreams to pieces if you don't take the time to get it exactly as thick or thin as it needs to be. How do you know how thick it should be? Think about the design and what you need the icing to do. Should it flow together or keep it's texture? Are you filling an entire cookie or just a small space? THIN ICING (also known as flood icing or 10 second count) is for covering large areas with smooth icing. It's thin though, so you'll need to contain it with a thicker icing. MEDIUM ICING (also known as one-consistency or 15 count) is for outlining and filling a cookie with the same consistency of icing. MEDIUM THICK ICING (also known as puffy icing or 17 count icing) is great for filling small spaces that might crater, for a...