There's not a lot I wouldn't do to get out of mopping on Saturday mornings. Yes. We only mop once a week. Please don't judge me all you mop-loving people out there. You may have heard, I have this uh, condition where my arm falls off when in contact with a mop...Apparently it's a thing. The ever elusive "they" think it might be caused by all the inorganic food I eat. My husband says it's because I stay up too late making cookies. But really... there's no easy way to know the real cause of my mopping aversion. It will always be one of those great life mysteries....like why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle or why do you get hiccups 3 seconds after the baby FINALLY FALLS ASLEEP for the first time in seven and a half days. But as it turns out, something happened last Saturday during the "weekend cleanse" portion of my Saturday morning. It was big. Like....HUGE. I will never be the same again. My life was irrevocably chang

Sometimes when I'm planning a set of cookies, I get an idea stuck in my head and I can't abandon it even if I'm fairly certain that it will never ever in a million years actually work out. And I try reallllly hard to convince myself that it will be a colossal waste of time. And will only end in tears and ice cream. But those sneaky little cookie cutters always seem to find their way into my cutting pile anyway. And between you and me...at least half the time it does end in some gigantic failure. Like, the kind of failure I want to set on fire and then bury in the backyard before anyone sees it. But sometimes....SOMETIMES....they turn out like these fantastic knitted pumpkin cookies. I saw a picture of a pumpkin someone had actually knitted. And I loved it. And wanted one of my very own to hold and love and squish until it told me it loved me best in the whole wide world. As it turns out though...I can't actually knit..no matter how many times my grandmother has t

Who doesn't love shiny cookies? I mean, really truly SHINY cookies? Okay, not every cookie needs to reflect my own face..but when you want that just-washed-actual-glass look instead of the very-nearly-almost-looks-like-glass-if-you-kind-of-squint-and-turn-your-head-sideways look, what is a decorator to do? Allow me to introduce you to the PME Clear Edible Glaze Spray. It works just like it sounds. You spray it on your cookie and it makes it shiny. The end. I bet you were hoping for a little more detail than that though, huh? Don't worry. I'll just keep talking until one of my children start crying. I kind of thought that I would just spray a little bit on my cookie and walk away and it would be crazy shiny. The first thing I noticed though, was that there were little bubbles all over the surface of the cookie right after I sprayed it. I kind of freaked out and for some reason, my instinct was to keep on spraying until the bubbles disappeared, but the back of t

I took my girls grocery shopping. On purpose. In hindsight, the hostile goldfish cracker negotiations before they would agree to even find their shoes should have tipped me off. I conceded the "no food in the car" policy and they allowed me the privilege of wrangling their wiggling feet into shoes that really have no business existing, much less being worn in public. I tried bribery. And distraction. And more snacks from my bag. I tried talking to them in a very serious, "I am not even kidding this time" voice. And we very nearly made it 3 steps inside the store before the melt downs started for real. I didn't pick the RIGHT driving cart. Little P wanted to drive the OTHER SIDE. WHY couldn't she touch everything?! She need her stuffed animal. NO! The OTHER stuffed animal!!! And all the pudding. WHYYYYYYY wasn't the pudding in her mouth this very second?? And then my A girl started freaking out because Little P was so loud. And she started sh

My brain is confused. I'm getting mixed signals, and I'm just not sure how to process them. It's November. And currently 72F outside right now. But..next week is Thanksgiving. But everywhere I go...decorations scream CHRISTMAS and WINTER. And...I am NOT even kidding you right now...when I went to the store today...there were Cadbury eggs. I was not prepared for that. I mean...usually I have a few weeks after Christmas to solidify my willpower. To convince myself that I do not NEED eleventy jillion bags of Cadbury mini eggs. I didn't have that. It's like all the windows in my brain just crashed at once and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on my couch with my electric blanket, making my Thanksgiving menu and shopping for Christmas presents with a stomach ache because I had just eaten half a bag of the most delicious mini eggs that have ever existed in the history of ever. And it's not even cold enough for an electric blanket. Why isn't it winter? And h

So...my daughter ran away a few weeks ago. And not the one you are thinking. Actually, maybe it IS the one you are thinking. I don't really know what you are thinking. Why would you assume that I do? Gosh. I'm not a mind reader. Anyway...it was my 2 year old Little P. We were at the post office minding our own business, playing the ever-entertaining, "Can you find...?" game with the greeting cards. You know, like, "Can you find a card with a dog that is wearing a party hat and also driving a car?" Or "Can you find a card that looks like an amoeba riding a bicycle but is really walrus baking a cake?" They are pretty good at the game. And then finally, it is our turn at the desk. I put my bag down and pull out my packages. I look at my 4 year old and then look in the other direction and there is no Little P. My 4 year old runs around the counter that is in the center of the room and screams, "SHE'S GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The post office

It's funny. As a kid, I always thought that when I grew up and bought my own groceries...I would buy SunChips every single time. I would live on SunChips. I would build my house out of SunChips and I would send SunChips Christmas cards that turned into bags of SunChips when you opened them. And then I got older. And learned about these things called "vegetables" and "exercise" and "modeling healthy behavior for children" and I cried inside because I never wanted to be a grown up ever again. And now when I go to the store and feel all "splurgy" and "spontaneous" I end up buying kitchen garbage bags...with DRAW STRINGS. One time, I even went all out and got the kind that smell like lavender. ( FYI -- Totally did NOT smell like lavender. Don't waste your money. Buy SunChips instead.) And then I come home and drown my SunChips sorrows in cookie decorating. Which is kind of ironic because these are "grateful"

Do you ever just want to lie on the couch clicking "next" on an article called " Hollywood's Top 100 Transformations " instead of actually writing a blog post? Or making cookie dough. Or sweeping the kitchen for the eleventy-millionth time today? At this point in my life, I don't even know who most of them are...it might as well be called, " Total Transformations of Complete Strangers So You Can Procrastinate For Another Hour ." Because you KNOW that after seeing that article for " 25 Secrets From the Set of I Love Lucy " 100 times...you just won't be able to stop yourself. And it's not like your kitchen floor is going to stay clean anyway. And you can just wake up early tomorrow and make that cookie dough...and that blog post is basically going to write itself... Except when it doesn't. And then I have to put my fingers on the keyboard and push buttons over and over again to explain the fact that I just love cookies tha

I personally think that color is the most exciting part about cake or cookie decorating. I love to put together just the right colors for each set of cookies I make! I love the process of combining food coloring in a new way to create a surprising color.  But for most people, getting the EXACT shade of icing or frosting you want can be a frustrating experience, no matter the brand of food coloring or food dye that you are using. So I created color palettes with formulas to help you expertly recreate all of the colors you see in my book or on my blog!  I LOVE COLOR!!! I love color so much that I dedicated an entire section of my book to color and color formulas. (The color charts in my book use Americolor soft gel paste coloring.) I also filled a whole page of my website with color palettes and food coloring formulas.   (The color palettes on my website use Chefmaster liqua-gel food coloring.) I use RATIOS in all of my color formulas and I just want to explain that a little bit furth

I'm basically swimming in costumes right now. And for once, that's not an exaggeration. My children choose their costumes very deliberately. They take weeks to decide. And then I take even more weeks to procrastinate the necessary arrangements for said costumes. Then there is crying late at night because it's not done, and frantic shopping and safety-pinning and the occasional use of hot-glue to make everything perfect a mere seconds before the neighborhood Halloween party begins. And then 3 minutes into the party, they realize that allllllllllllll those things I've been telling them about their costumes not being "practical" or "user-friendly" or "safe to walk in" are actually true. And I end up with an armful of cast-offs as my children run around wearing clothes that would make anyone assume they were simply going as a vagabond for Halloween. Fast-forward to the night before Halloween when I ceremoniously announce that they will