Oh geeze. Christmas is in ONE WEEK. I still have to wrap my dad's gift. My sister and I need to find something for our mom (who reads this blog. Hi, Mommy). I write my friend Sadie a story and send it to her on Christmas Eve every year, so I need to write that. I have some leftover dough in the freezer for making cookies (more on that in a minute), and I should probably use it soon.
Christmas also means work is way busier. The cafe has been SLAMMED lately, and unfortunately we've been a bit understaffed for the demand. Supposedly, today is supposed to be the second-biggest shopping day in the year, right after Black Friday. We were super busy on BF, so I'm praying that it's not like that today--but I know it will be. College kids are back in town, teenage mall rats are let loose by parents who want to get some shopping done, and mothers are out with small children in tow, picking up last-minute gifts.
On the plus side, my coworkers are still wonderful people. I honestly don't know how I'd get through all of this without them. Cracking jokes makes everything so much better. The cafe manager is fantastic, keeping everything running, and our lead manager is brilliant, too. I don't know how they get everything done, but they do.
At home, all of our Christmas decorations are up. I decorated my room, too, switching out the leaf garland for tinsel, hanging stockings, a gingerbread man, and snowman on the wall, and even putting mini lights around my bulletin board:
I like it so much, I might just leave the lights up year-round (and take them with me whenever I end up moving!). Ah, holiday decorating. It makes me happy.
2. So how 'bout some decorated cookies to make me even happier?
We had a cookie exchange at work, so I made sugar cookies with royal icing (there was a reindeer, too, but my family ate all of the ones on this plate before I could get a picture). I thought the cookie exchange was on a Sunday the 12th, so I had planned to do all of the baking on Thursday and all of the decorating on Saturday. I started the decorating on Thursday just to get ahead of the game. It's a good thing I did--I found out on Friday afternoon that the exchange was actually on Saturday the 11th! I went home and finished them that night. They turned out much better than last year's:
though last year's photo quality was better, since I still had a camera back then! I learned a lot about using royal icing over the past year, though, like about piping outlines and flooding (which I'm too lazy to do, as there are only 24 hours in a day, and not 40) and not piping red icing onto half-dry white icing as it will bleed, and using no-taste red instead of regular red gel coloring because that way the icing doesn't taste like crap!
The only difference I didn't like was that I used meringue powder for the icing, as I was afraid of giving people raw egg whites (normally, for royal icing, I use raw egg whites, powdered sugar, water, and some lemon juice or almond extract). I liked the colors better with meringue powder; they colors were sharper (though that may just be because I finally used enough gel paste!) and the overall consistency was better. I didn't like the taste, though.
If I use up that remaining dough, I think I'll use egg whites in the icing this time and see what happens. I'm not sure if I have time to make them for Christmas day, since I'm working Monday-Friday next week, but if not, I'll make them for New Year's Eve. Why?
3. BECAUSE I HAVE OFF!
I have New Year's Eve off, so I can go up to NY! Besides Thanksgiving, it's my favorite holiday of the year. It's a fantastic excuse to get together with friends and stay up late celebrating--not that we didn't do that all the time in NY anyway, but it's doubly fun when the whole city is doing it, too. And even better, my friend Jocelyn is returning to NY on the 28th, so we can all be reunited (we haven't all been in the city together since July). I'm super excited and can't wait. I know there's a lot of work to be done in the meantime, but that one small little ray of hope is getting me through it. Really, I just start smiling sometimes because I remember that!
I can't believe yet another year is ending, though. That means it's been 3 years since I decided I was going to do Bike & Build. Eek! And speaking of biking, I got a nice tuneup for my bike (yay!)... but have yet to ride it to work. I was going to today, but... well, staying in bed and updating my blog sounded more fun than rushing to get dressed. I have to work at 10 am on Wednesday and Thursday, so I'll definitely bike those days (unless it's snowing/raining), and I for sure want to bike on Christmas Eve, since I find the idea of a Christmas Eve bike ride romantic (in the capital R sense).
Happy Chrismahanukwanzayear!
0 comments:
Post a Comment