Have you ever noticed how things sort of slide sideways in your brain as you approach the early morning hours? Like noises. That one dead branch in your tree suddenly sounds a lot like a gang of menacing thieves sneaking up to your back door. And you *know* they aren't coming after your perfectly matched sock-and-sandle sets. They've probably been watching you for days. And they're going to wait until you stop decorating and go to the bathroom. Then they'll break in and steal your good stuff and draw all over your walls with sharpies. So you decide that you'll show them. You won't take that bathroom break. They'll just have to wait and wait until their legs cramp up and they have to walk it off. Then you can run outside brandishing the alarm button on your car keys as they run off into the neighbor's yard where that noisier-than-it-is-big dog will keep them cornered until the authorities can arrive. And you'll probably get a medal because the poli...

Not every choice I make is a good one. Joining my friends in their half mile swim to the floating island in the middle of the lake before I had actually learned how to swim...NOT a good idea. Painting my bedroom while my husband was gone for the weekend... BRILLIANT choice. Deciding that I would *never* let the mail sit on the counter for even a day... life changing decision. But choosing to remodel my house at the same time that my baby was due? The jury is still out. They literally started tearing down walls 2 days before Penelope was born. And they are almost finished! New walls are up, some stairs are missing and we will soon have actual bedrooms in the basement instead of weird medical billing offices. The drywall people were here yesterday. My children literally pulled up chairs and grabbed popcorn. See, the drywall guys used STILTS to take care of the ceiling patches!! It was the greatest day ever!! And I've decided that I need some of them. And I'm going to learn ...

I'm not a hoarder by any means. When an item runs out of foreseeable use, I put it in this special place I call "the trash." Or in a designer (cardboard) box destined for exotic places like Goodwill. I've moved over 20 times in my life. And every time I move I become less and less attached to the things I have to wrap, package, carry, load, unload, unpack, and wash. I cannot say the same for icing. I am drawn to it. I love it and the endless possibility it holds. I love it for the color that it is and the color it could become. I adore the way it moves in a bowl and erases its own lines and wrinkles. (Seriously, who *wouldn't* love that??!!) I love the smell of it and the shiny gloss on the surface. I can't let it go. There was a point where I worried that it was ruining my marriage because I was getting rid of food instead of icing to make room in the fridge. Luckily, I discovered even smaller bowls to store it in. The problem.... besides throwing out per...

Remember last year? I had just moved back to the good old US of A and had nearly zero belongings. My household furnishings consisted of a card table, 2 folding chairs, and a pot. I slept on a blanket on the floor and used my cell phone as an alarm clock, night light, and emergency weapon at 3 in the morning when my neighbor's cat knocked over a bucket in their backyard. I was making cookies with a grocery bag full of cutters my aunt had loaned me and some Ziplock bags. (As it turns out... more than a year later...I still haven't returned those cutters. I'm a bad person.) (Not entirely true. My aunt said they could stay and play for awhile longer. She'll come visit them if she gets lonely. She's a fantastic aunt like that.) My whole point here is that I made cookies like these last year. And never posted them. And I wasn't worried about it because who in their right mind would make graduation cookies with a blue ribbon cutter and a football cutter? ...

Sometimes you just need a little something more, you know? Like switching out your yoga pants for actual clothes when you go outside your house. Sometimes that's enough... but sometimes you want to get a little crazy and put on some mascara as well. Sometimes you've got a fantastic cookie design. And you love it. And it's perfect. But it's lonely and needs a friend. And we're all about love and friendship, but you've very nearly run out of time and you've completely run out of ideas and creativity because, let's be honest, you've been awake for 48 hours straight taking care of those fantastic and perfect cookies. I have a solution. Add some tiny filler flowers. You can always fit a couple more of them in the corners of your baking sheet. And if you pre-make a bunch of the middles, these flowers take literally seconds to ice. And you can use your left over icing to make sure they coordinate with the "perfect" cookies you just ...

I want to tell you something about mixing colors. And I've got a tiny little angel in my arms right now. And some Builder Guys knocking out walls in the back room of my house. And I have to pick up my son from school in about 20 minutes. So let's just get right to it, shall we? ** Because I love you all, I'm going to start at the beginning. And by "beginning" I mean "the primary colors." And those would be Red, Yellow, and Blue. They are the colors that make up all the other colors. For example, if you mix red and yellow together... you get orange. If you mix yellow and blue together, you'll find yourself looking at green. And what happens when you mix red and blue together? That's right... you get purple. Or violet. Or aubergine. You can call it whatever you want to... but if you mix red and blue together, you're going to come up with a color that lies somewhere between them on our color scale. And since we have purple on BOT...