Whew

I feel bad because I feel like I haven't gotten much done the last two evenings. Which isn't true -- I've gotten a lot done. But it happens to be on things that "don't count" for me.

Last night I spent mostly planning for my trip to visit strangess in March, which looks like it'll actually be a trip to visit strangess and brennabat in April, instead. Still, it's shaping up and looks like everything will go smoothly.

Tonight was even busier. My favorite loan officer's birthday is tomorrow. Glinda and one of my other co-workers made plans to celebrate it. My co-worker bought her some presents last night, and Glinda suggested we buy some pink cookies or something for her as an additional gift. This particular loan officer adores pink, and is also a big fan of all things Barbie. I volunteered to make the cookies if someone else would buy red food coloring, so that I could dye the icing pink. Glinda said, "OK, I'll buy it when I get lunch. Do you need anything else?"

"No, that should be it."

So Glinda comes back with red food coloring, two bottles of decorator icing, one tube of decorator gel, and four jars of sprinkles. "In case you want to get creative."

Shortly after I got home, I set to work. I don't own any cookie cutters, but I decided to try making shaped cookies anyway. I started out working with a knife, but what worked best ultimately was shaping them with my fingers and fingernails. Hearts were the easiest to do, so I did a bunch of those, and a bunch of simple round ones (what I usually do), too. I tried doing butterflies three times, but only one came out properly. I also did four "Barbie" profiles, which came out surprisingly well. I'd expected that to be too complicated to work, but the profile was one of my test cases. In fact, my test run went so well it lulled me into a false sense of security -- the next batch flopped utterly. After that, they were mostly fun.

Then I used up a lot of decorator icing figuring out how it worked. More or less. I can now make an OK star. The rest of it, I'm not so good at. If I'd had green, I'd've tried making leaves, but all I had was pink and white.

So I decorated. Lots of cookies. Most of them I didn't put too much effort into. I worked the most on the profiles, and they came out recognizeably "female with ponytail in profile". The loan officer will (hopefully) think Barbie, though I doubt anyone else would make the connection. Could've used some yellow for the hair; instead, it's all pink or white. (I switched to white after the pink ran out.)

And that was my evening. Bedtime now. Writing tomorrow, I hope.