You guys. I've been doing this "competitive fitness" challenge thing with some fellow cookie decorators. It's all about being healthier and sleeping and eating vegetables and blah, blah, blah. Pretty much it's turned into the grown up version of kids on the playground daring each other to eat dirt, except it's brussels sprouts and bok choy instead of dirt. The down side is that as adults, we can't just spit it out and high five everyone and call it a success. We have to actually EAT it. And pretend like we're totally cool, responsible adults that eat vegetables for snacks. You know, because we've just trained our bodies to crave healthy, responsible foods. And we definitely don't eat ice cream just because we're stressed out because every person in the house is screaming at us including ourselves and we don't even know how that happened. Responsible adults don't do that. They eat ice cream from a tiny little glass jar on a stand...

Real talk here. I love decorating cookies. I love making that gorgeous chocolate dough. And I love eating it while pretending that it's for "quality control." I love the way my house smells while they are baking. I love feeling like a mad scientist when I mix up my colors. And the way the final detail makes an entire cookie suddenly RIGHT. But more than anything... I love the people that I meet because of decorating cookies. It's a big old world out there. And one of my very first and dearest friends from the beginning of my days of cookie decorating who basically started this cookie decorating revolution has ONCE AGAIN blown that world wide open by starting an innovative, adorable, and incredibly functional line of cookie decorating tools and cutters. But I can't tell you who she is. Just kidding! You already know! It's Callye from Sweet Sugarbelle! Her products debuted earlier this spring for online purchasing. And just last week -- they arrived ...

I took my kids camping last week. Camping is basically a dirt nap sandwiched between two tornadoes. There's all the planning and food buying and the filling and the stuffing of bags with clothes that are actually all wrong for the weather that is coming for you, only you don't even know it because all seven weather channels that you checked said it would be warm and sunny. And you're up ridiculously late finishing the laundry so you have all those so very necessary perfect items and up early putting all the food in a cooler with a giant block of ice that is already started to join that great ocean in the sky and you somehow manage to corral all those little bodies into one singular vehicle only to have everyone wish they could be anywhere but that vehicle for the next 3 to a million hours or so. And then you get there and the kids explode out of the car like they've never breathed air before. Ever. In their entire lives because clearly you live on a submarine and...

Wanted: Laundry-doing person. Must be able to put clothes in the washing machine and start it on a regular basis. And by "regular basis" I mean more than once or twice a month. Every day is ideal. Knowledge of washing temperatures is a plus, but really - if you can shove the clothes in that thing, somehow manage to add soap and press "start"- I won't complain. Transferring clothes to the dryer before they mold is negotiable but preferred. Helping the cleaned clothing find its way home while pretending that the rest of my house is in perfect condition is an absolute requirement. A signed confidentiality agreement will be signed regarding the state of the kitchen before work or payment can occur. Payment to be made in decorated cookies- payable on Saturday mornings or in chocolate cookie dough - payable on Tuesday evenings. Or you could just come over and talk to me while I avoid doing laundry altogether. Or starting cookies. I'm okay with that too...

I'm basically the queen of irrational fears. It's a miracle I ever lived to become an adult. Sometimes I worry that the tree in my front yard will get struck by lightning and crash into my house. I've spent actual time trying to figure out exactly how tall the tree is so I can estimate the damage it would cause. You know...just to be prepared. And every time I go to the grocery store, I'm terrified that I've left my wallet at home. Like, my heart starts racing as I put all my groceries on the counter for the cashier and I dig frantically through my bag until I find it. Interesting fact though -- I never really check BEFORE I leave for the store when I could actually do something about it. I prefer to freak out at the check stand instead. Oh! And I also have this crazy fear that I'm going to leave a child sitting in the grocery cart in the parking lot and just drive away. I always *ALWAYS* put my children in the car and get them buckled before I put the g...

The way I see it, as a parent, there are THREE nearly insurmountable tasks that you have to somehow see your way to the other side of with each and every one of your children. They are what I like to call " the parenting gauntlet of sadness and despair. " You know, as opposed to " the parenting gauntlet of happiness and love " which basically involves cuddling and marshmallows. But that's not the one we are talking about here today. Don't distract me. The three hardest things I've ever, ever done as a parent...the things that very nearly convinced me that joining a circus really was the way to go... 1. POTTY TRAINING 2. TEACHING THEM TO READ 3. TEACHING THEM TO PEDAL A BIKE I mean, potty training by itself is enough to undo a person...for both child and parent. If you make it through the endless accidents and near-misses and the mountains of laundry you are afraid to touch...you should both get a pony. And maybe teaching a child to read ...

Do you remember those "sound" CDs from the early 90's? You could buy a CD that was nothing but rain on a rooftop or wind in the desert. Sometimes they had music...sometimes they didn't. I loved those things. I would listen to the entire soundtrack and pretend like I was somewhere else. Although, I'm not really sure why I would ever have wanted to pretend that I was in the desert in a windstorm. From what I can tell from my cinematic research....windstorms in the desert can bury you in like 7 seconds. And then camels eat your hair. And I like my hair. I don't want it to be eaten. Ironically, the one CD I *didn't* like was a sailboat CD. You've got to understand -- I love sailboats. I used to practically live my life on them. I taught people how to sail. I took people on sailing trips. I raced sailboats. I built sailboats. I cleaned sailboats. I slept on sailboats. (Life is so weird, isn't it?!) And the snap of the canvas and the chink of t...

Can we talk about paper for a minute? More specifically -- the pages of a book. I know I'm a blogger and this pretty much goes against everything internetty that ever was... but I just adore books. I like the weight of them. And the smooth smooth paper. And I like that things stay in the same place. If that one recipe you love and adore more than your first glitter nail polish is on the bottom of the left page...it's always going to be on the bottom of the left page. You can ACTUALLY book mark it and it will always be right where you left it. And you can flip back and forth between two pages for as long as you like. You don't have to click on something to make it bigger. It's already bigger. And it doesn't have to load. You don't have to charge it. And if you accidentally spill your drink on a book (who does that???!) ... it's probably still going to be okay. Maybe a little wrinkled or wavy...but still totally functional.   And in all of my love of b...

You guys know this is my favorite day of the month! I get to peruse my cousin's fantastic paper creation blog and then recreate one of them in sugar form. I actually made these awhile and I have been SAVING them for some reason that even I don't comprehend. And also I may have forgotten I had them for awhile. But here we are with some of the cutest, most adorablest sea creature cookies I've ever made. Which is not a surprise considering I used this CUTEST BEYOND WORDS crab card as my inspiration!!!! WHY did I not also make the flower?! (Because I'm just awful at flowers, that's why. But next time...Imma brave it anyway. It's just too cute.) 1. Bake yourself a crab shaped cookie. You can eat one of them if you want to. I won't tell. 2. Using thick black icing and a #2 tip, outline the entire cookie. For some reason, I thought it made sense to leave gaps for the eyes. But...it doesn't. Just outline the whole thing. Let the outline dry for ...

There was a time in my life that summers meant sailboats. Little tiny one person sailboats that I could carry all by myself....Sailboats I made out of spare parts and fiberglass....Catamaran sailboats that would fly practically sideways through the water...Big ol' sailboats with booms and giant genoa sails that you could sleep in for days. I taught people to sail and took people on sailing tours and I raced sailboats and very nearly won... and I never thought I would find something that made me that happy. And then, guess what? There are a MILLION fantastic things in this life! Like getting married and crazy kids and living in South Korea and whitewater rafting and rock climbing and making cookies and MAKING COOKIES WITH COOKIE FRIENDS!!! I just spent this weekend hanging out with cookie friends and filming some shows for McGoo U. And basically, I'm high on life right now. I wish I could share this week with all of YOU! But since I can't, I'm going to share saili...

I feel as though the world of my childhood has been washed away like a sidewalk chalk drawing on a rainy afternoon. Nobody knows who Rainbow Brite is anymore. Oregon Trail apparently caught it's own silicon diphtheria. I'm cool with the disappearance of shoulder pads, but where did high-tops go? And scrunchies? My hair was never healthier! My children don't even know what a land line IS, much less how to use one. No one is going to tell them that life is gonna be this way. I mean, they could always be stuck in second gear. When it hasn't been their day, their week, their month, or even their year, who's going to be there for THEM?  And just yesterday, I took them to McDonald's and discovered to my complete shock that they no longer sell root beer. ROOT BEER. I finally live in America again...and they got rid of root beer. I don't even know how to recover from this. I mean... I actually don't. I take my kids to McDonald's for ice cream and roo...