It's a new tradition

It's cookie decorating time in these parts. 

Sara and Henry were definitely coming over, and Sean surprised us by joining. He usually likes to stay home when Sara and I do shenanigans. He's a lot like Doug. I bet if they spent more time together, they'd hit it off and be pals. 

Last year I sent cookies out to people so I had a need for extra sets of hands (or two extra sets) and we had two nights worth of decorating. This year was a bit more low-key. I baked about 1/3 than last year, and we just decorated for us. 

I set up a large bowl of white icing and a muffin tin filled with the same white icing for Henry to decide what colors were going in. He's obsessed with the science of color mixing, and so I wanted him to pick the shades. He made a beautiful turquoise, and our brown came out black until we added in much more white to lighten it up. The orange and pink were also perfect. Two shades of green. I think we spent a solid half hour at first mixing it all up before we even got into the decorating. 

I thought I took a picture of the table before they arrived but managed to miss out on that, sadly. So just imagine the perfect set up of icing, cookies piled carefully, drying trays, and then, how it turned into this by the end: 

All told, the chaos is so worth it. We had a blast. Sara gets very detailed and intricate, Henry just slaps color around and goes on to the next one. No two cookies were the same. We didn't use as many sprinkles as last year, and the m&ms were mostly getting eaten but that's okay. 

I had purchased eyes for making the reindeer or gingerbread men, I wanted the super small ones like I had from last year but they only had big ones. At one point I remember saying "Where's the bag of eyes? Oh that's a sentence I never imagined I'd be saying." 

We had a ton of laughs, and I ended up going to bed before I cleaned up, which was a good idea at the time for sure. 

I woke up to go to the bathroom around 5am and looked at the table, muttered "oh my actual fuck," and went back to bed to save the clean up for this morning. 

Like last year, I kind of want just a bunch more of the trees and some quiet time to sit and decorate them by myself quietly. Maybe I'll do one more round. I do have white icing left over that can easily be turned green. Perhaps this weekend. Maybe.

Here are the photos, and Sara said "if it happens twice, it's a tradition." 

So it's a tradition. For me, I've been doing this for years (I looked back at some of the previous years here in the blog and see several posts of us as a family, or just me getting the decorations done, so why not make it a tradition. 

Sara was going to come over and pick her choices but the day got away from her and I'm off to bed. She'll come over before lunch tomorrow to gather what she wants. I should whip up some chocolate chip ones for her to have too. 

Notes for next year:

• do 2 of the muffin tin setups, it was hard for people to reach across to the one container of colors, so make it easier on everyone and have a couple options
• maybe buy a whole set of ramekins. I only have two right now, when once upon a time, I had 12. Not sure where they all went but, maybe we're due for more
• don't bother with dying the dough any colors in advance, just go with all white/plain
• try a gingerbread recipe, an actual gingerbread recipe
• paint a bunch of things with colored icing a day in advance so they harden, then more color/decoration can be added, thus preventing spread of color, like gingerbread men pants/shirts/etc
• have dinner beforehand, stupid

Digits below. 

digits 

exercise: 12/12 hours of 250 steps.  I stubbed my toes on my right foot very badly this morning so hitting 2k before noon wasn't happening, 4500 steps by bedtime thanks to the injury.

blood glucose:

8:30am: 155
5pm: 230
9:30pm: 213

food:
coffee, water, diet ginger ale
11am: apple w/peanut butter; metformin
1:30pm: pbj sandwich on oat bread, w/low sugar jelly
2pm: pretzels and hummus
6:30pm: Ham and bean soup; potato roll; metformin+jardiance