"And the hoooome of the braaaave!"

I learned four things after a great wine and cheese karaoke party this weekend:

1. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is a surprisingly awesome karaoke song, especially if someone adds amazing flyby sound effects.
   
2. If the party also includes a camera, a tripod and a bucket of props, there will be photographic evidence that you thoroughly enjoyed the party.
3. I picked a good man to live life with; not everyone can pull off a rat tail so well.
4. I can rock my little black dress and a swimming mask. Also? My black dress and an eyepatch.
   

"Mmmmm, the rat tail."

There ain't nothing like being around a 2 year old in December

Their expressions pretty much sum up the joy of Christmas to me.

God keeps trying to keep me humble

Yesterday, I made some pretty dramatic statements about how I created the world's greatest sweet plate or something like that.

Last night, I need to make some fresh cookies for a gift and I decided to try a new recipe.

The cookies were supposed to look like this (emphasis on supposed to):

Yummy, right?

Here's my first batch:

Because nothing says, "Merry Christmas and may the joy of Jesus reside in your heart all year long" like a giant blob of congealed cookie.

But I was optimistic. After all, I had recently DIPPED CHERRIES IN CHOCOLATE! and CREATED BEAUTIFUL SUGAR COOKIES! and MADE NON-GRITTY FUDGE!

Here's the second batch:

Oh good, a slightly smaller blob of congealed cookie.

Fear not, people. Old Katie who screws up everything baked and sweet is still alive and kickin'.

In other news, Joe has been keeping a huge secret from me. HUGE secret. It's called Urban Dictionary's Word of the Day. I found this little gem in his Google reader yesterday:

Tiger's wife mad

Def: the act of being so angry at someone that you find the item
they cherish most and beat them with it

Chris was so tiger's wife mad at Joe that he grabbed
Joe's Wii remote and beat him with it.

You're welcome.

I want to live next door to The Cooks Next Door

I'm going to tell you all the same thing I told Joe last week: I now feel like an authentic adult female.

You would think getting married and living with a man would inspire this feeling. Or perhaps pushing a tiny human being from my body would be sufficient.

But no, it took creating a Christmas goodie plate FROM SCRATCH!

(Public service announcement to Santa: please bring me a camera for Christmas so I can stop taking dorky camera phone photos. Thankssomuch.)

May I boast about myself and Madeline? Because we made:

• Chocolate and butterscotch peanut clusters drizzled with white chocolate
• Cherries dunked in dark chocolate
• Butter pecan fudge
• Ah-mazing sugar cookies
  

I am a serious dunce when it comes to making sweets. If you think I'm exaggerating at the expense of laughter, just take a walk down memory lane with me. Remember the Great "Oh Fudge" Event of '08?

And when it comes to sugar cookies? Oh my word, I won't even try to recount the number of times (and number of different recipes) I attempted to make cut-out sugar cookies, only to wind up throwing half the uncooked dough away when the first half came out brown and crunchy and distorted.

But last week, I became a bit obsessed with The Cooks Next Door and in two days, I made:

• the aforementioned candy
• the ah-mazing sugar cookies
  
• Chicken with yogurt and pomegranates
  
• Herb couscous with citrus and pomegranate dressing

If you click over to the sugar cookies post, you can see my incredibly hyper comment written when I ran over to the computer the second after I pulled the first cookie sheet out of the oven and realized, "OHMYWORDITWORKEDITWORKED." I'm pretty sure The Cooks think I'm insane.

If you are looking for some kid-friendly recipes, I highly recommend these. Madeline helped me with every step of the process. She dried the cherries and dipped them in chocolate. She dumped all the ingredients in the pot for the fudge. She poured the peanuts in the melted goodness.

And for the sugar cookies, she helped with every step and I'm not kidding. She dumped ingredients. She used the mixer. She rolled the dough and cut them out with the cookie-cutters. She transferred them to the cookie sheet. She iced and sprinkled.

It was a blast.

We made the cookies in one day and the candy the next day. I thought the candy-making would be long and laborious. But we made it all in two hours, including kitchen clean-up without a dishwasher.

(I only know the exact time because my mother-in-law was coming over that afternoon and my house is always sparkling clean and shiny when she visits all the time.)

I'm pretty sure for the next 67 Christmases, I will be making the exact same recipes. If it ain't broke....

She is such a girl

I think it's safe to assume most females have had The "Adorable" Shoe experience. It typically goes as follows:

• You spot an adorable pair of shoes
• You try them on and they manage to even feel adorable
• You buy them
• During the shoes' first night at home, they magically shrink and distort themselves into medieval torture devices
  
• You wear them the next day and your feet ARE IN PAIN
• You spend the rest of the day limping around
  
• You are now faced with the decision to either return the uncomfortable shoes or keep them by lying to yourself, "They'll stretch out. I'll just have to break them in."

I first had The "Adorable" Shoe experience with a gorgeous pair of hunter-green Keds. (Why, yes, my childhood was during the late 80s/early 90s. Why do you ask?) They were painfully small but looked amazing with my white push-down socks.

I choose to keep those rockin' Keds and limped around all summer.

Last night, I found a sweet pair of red shoes for Madeline.

I loved them and I knew she would love them. I thought they held the potential to replace her sequined dress shoes that she's worn every day since Halloween, her "glass slippers." The glass slippers have become like a fourth family member to us.

I was right about the red shoes. Madeline immediately kicked off the glass slippers and wanted to wear the red shoes right. that. moment.

But when she put them on, I noticed that her chubby feet seemed to be exploding out of the shoes. Then, with a happy grin on her face, she began to limp around. I kept asking her if they hurt her feet and she'd reply, "No, Mommy! I love it! Thank you!"

All said while limping. And all I could think was, "Oh, honey. You're such a girl."

Then she asked to wear them as soon as she popped out of bed this morning. Again, her feet barely seem to fit. Again, she started limping. And again, she repeatedly thanked me for the red shoes while denying any pain.

After a few minutes, I made her take them off. Because as much as I want to trust the judgment of my daughter, I don't.

I saw this:

Oh, the price of beauty. In case you think maybe it just looked bad, when I touched the reddest part of her foot, she nearly started crying.

But despite that, she still keeps trying to tell me that she needs to wear them.

After my tenth refusal, I think she understood needed to find the next best thing to wearing them herself.

In the end, the really sad part of this story is that I'm now lying to myself and saying, "Maybe we can just stretch them out." I'm dreading returning them.

At our house last night

As recorded in camera phone photos, our house was a bit of a disaster zone last night.

I attempted to make Southern skillet cornbread but ran into two obstacles:

1. Our cast-iron skillet is about 52 inches wide since it's what we take camping and like to fit pancakes, eggs and bacon in one pan over a fire.
   
2. When I opened the bag, I realized I bought corn flour instead of cornmeal.

Since I didn't feel like quadrupling the recipe, I used a standard cake pan. Since I didn't have cornmeal, I plunged ahead with the flour because the bag promised "AUTHENTIC MEXICAN FLAVOR." And surely that's a plus with Southern skillet cornbread.

When I reached the end of the recipe, the part where I was supposed to "flip cornbread onto a cutting board so the hard butter-crusted bottom would show," this was what I got:

Only a truly loving husband would hear my groans, come over to the counter and declare, "Looks great to me." The sweet part is he actually meant it.

I'm pretty sure he was delirious with hunger at that point.

Then about a hour after we put Madeline to bed, Joe went to check on her. He came back to the living room and told me I had to go see our daughter.

I took this as a sign that I should also bring my phone to snap a picture. And I was right.

I promise, she only had water at dinner.

And so Christmas begins

It's December 1. Which means it's the start of Advent calendar I've been waiting about, oh, 12 months to do.

I'm so stinkin' excited. If Madeline could understand what it all means, I'm sure she would be excited to. But for now, I'm taking on the role of unbelievably excited 2-year-old.

This year, I've been planning an activity for every day of December. Before you think I've gone diagnosed Christmas Crazy, each day is not a huge ordeal. Some events will be with family or friends. Some will be just for our little family to do in the evening when Joe comes home. Some will be just for Madeline and me during the day.

Today started by blaring Christmas music. (Which has been playing since October but who's paying attention to that?) Then we opened today's bag which said Madeline could open a book present, make our hot chocolate mix and read the Christmas story from the Bible with Mommy.

(Somewhere I read about wrapping your Christmas books in last year's wrapping paper to make it a special event to pull out the books. I completely love this idea so 11 of our days will include opening a book. Seriously, 11 presents for Madeline to open without me spending a penny? What's not to love?)

Of course, this meant we had to drink some hot chocolate after making the mix. And let me tell you, Madeline is quite a fan of hot chocolate. She gets it from her mom.

I'm doing my best to raise her right and instilling a love for the holidays is definitely on that list.