Tomorrow is the big day friends. What?! You don't know? That's okay. I'll tell you. Settle in. It's a good story. Once upon a time, I lived in South Korea. And I started making cookies because I had a tiny oven and I pretty much had no other choice as it would be impossible to bake anything else like 12 tier cakes or 2 loaves of bread at the same time. And then I wanted to buy cookie cutters, but they don't sell them anywhere in South Korea. ( Well, to be fair, they do sometimes sell them at the grocery store that was in the next town over. But it took 45 minutes to drive there, plus 20 minutes of children loading/unloading on each side. So when you add those together, it took like 3 days to get to this grocery store that only sometimes sold cookie cutters.) So my only option was to order things from this little box that sits on my lap. My children like to call it "the computer store." But since I am driven by impulse and not reason, I rarely order ...

I live in a Halloween world. My bedroom door creaks. Not like the little, tired creak that most doors creak. It's a giant, " I want you to know that I am moving all on my own without anyone even touching me and there is nothing you can do about it " kind of creak. I swear my neighbors can hear it. That's probably why they avoid me. I mean...I can't imagine any other reason they wouldn't have invited themselves over for a nice little chat and cookies as soon we moved in. I even had an antique lacy type plate ready to throw cookies onto should the occasion present itself. I suppose I could have just invited them over. But then I couldn't have been surprised and all-- "Oh, I just happened to have these labor intensive cookies waiting around in tupperware. No big deal." Also, there is a cat that sits outside my bedroom window and howls when I start to write blog posts. And it is a black cat. Well, it's partially a black cat. I think it's...

I find myself to be a smidgeon too busy these days. I'm making a concerted effort to remove the "extras" from my daily life. So far, I've given up shutting the door softly. I just let it slam. By my calculations, that will save me exactly 17 minutes over the next year. It's the little things that make a difference, right? Also, I'm trying to consolidate all the hours I spend avoiding laundry. It's been a little rough this week. I mean...I've dedicated YEARS of my life to perfecting my ability to give laundry the ol' slip. I got the laundry baskets that expand to hold enough laundry for a trek to the Arctic. I have more socks than there are days in the month. I set my dryer to silent so it won't give off some awful screeching noise that sends me and my three children running into the street for fear that our house is on fire. I am a card carrying member of the " Re-wash Three Times Because It Never Made It To The Dryer" club. I e...

Science is a serious business at my house. We don't kid around about those tin-can phones and magnetic rocks. They are not toys. They are serious and require serious faces. And snacks, because everything is better with snacks. Well, everything except cleaning the garbage disposal. That is not better with snacks. See, I have a boy child that loves science. LOVES science. I think he would marry it if it were a girl. And also if it had the " cutest face in the whole world. " We have been doing science "experiments" with him since he was three years old. At first they were the "look what happens when we put food coloring in water" kind of experiments. But he's worked his way up to growing plants in the window sill and exploding soap in our microwave . Like the loving, rational person that I am, I've taken something absolutely wholesome and desirable and twisted it into something that I can use against my darling child for my own perso...

I have written and re-written this blog post a hundred times in my head and it never sounds right. Bo Johnson, the 13 year old boy that taught a community to love, ended his battle with cancer on Friday as he passed from this life into the next. If anyone had a right complain, and draw into himself out of misery, it was Bo. But he didn't do that. He rallied his town, and his county, and people from all over the world together in a mission for kindness and goodness. He said, " “Love each other, help each other, have your neighbor's back. If you see someone in need — even a stranger — reach out and help. This world can be a better place if we care and help each other.” A fund was set up for Bo's family to help cover the soaring medical costs of his cancer treatment. As his battle drew to a close, he asked that the funds be used to help others. Among other small, but thoughtful acts, he wanted to take food to the nurses in the hospital where he had stayed, to purch...

Cookies are more than just butter and sugar (and obviously eggs and flour.)  It's the way they are put together.  A beautiful card is more than the paper and ink used to create it.  Cakes and breads and crafts and homes and even people are more than the things that make them up. They are art. WE are art. And if I remember anything from 4th grade art appreciation (besides the unhappy outcome of mixing slanted desks, an open jar of paint, and a brand new dress) it is that art should be ENJOYED. And it should be appreciated and explored and apparently it should also serve as material for pop quizzes. I don't know about you all, but where cookies are concerned, I'm super good at the ENJOYING THEM part. I love making them and eating them and giving them away and looking at them and talking about them and thinking about them and drawing them and dreaming about them. I'm also especially skilled at the APPRECIATING THEM part. I have selflessly given up many h...

Is there a subtle way to tell people that you are overly obsessed with making cookies and spend all hours of the day and night baking and decorating and dreaming of cookies? I kind of feel like maybe I need to come with a warning label. You know, like, "Warning -- will speak in cookie." or "Don't talk to me while I am telling you how adorable your baby is because secretly I'm trying to memorize that FANTASTIC pattern on their tiny little shirt so I can recreate it in sugar form later this week."  Let's be honest. Cookies are a big part of my life. I buy the "big sugar" and enough flour to bake a two-story play fort for my children out of gingerbread....on a weekly basis. I panic when I have less than 2 bags of powdered sugar. We got a package in the mail today. My son asked if it was cookie cutters. (It was.) He said he knew that it was because *I* was holding it. Apparently, the only packages I get are cookie cutters. My s...

  On this exact day last year, I had already posted ELEVEN Halloween cookie posts (and 3 general Fall-ish type posts.) I was making Halloween cookies in August . I'm trying to hold back this year. Mostly because I'm superficial and I care what other people think and I really, really, really don't want to be the weird kid on the playground that nobody wants to play with because they are trying to convince all the other kids that they are The Master Dreamer and that everyone else is just a pawn of their imagination. And by that I mean....IS there such a thing as too many Halloween cookie posts? Because, I'm gonna tell you right now that I LOVE HALLOWEEN COOKIES!! They are by far my most favorite kind of cookies to make. I could make them year round. I *might* have made them year round already. I do not know why I like Halloween so much. Its kind of a scary holiday. Its like an unwritten Halloween rule that you're supposed to scare someone. But not little k...