Veronica’s 1st Annual Cookie & Cake Decorating Day

Well everyone knows I love to bake and decorate cookies & cakes.  If I can involve kids in this I enjoy it that much more.  So I decided in February that I was going to host a Decorating Day for family & friends children.

I ordered the cutest invites from www.vistaprint.com and had them within a week.  I sent out invites to 25 children.  On the day of the party I ended up with 15 decorators (also had the moms/grandmas/aunts/brothers of some of the girls). 

The day before the party I took the day off of work and baked 117 shaped sugar cookies,  baked 17 “Egg” shaped cakes, and made enough super sugar buttercream to cover it all.  I started baking around 11:30am and really wasn’t finished until almost midnight!  But seeing how much fun the kids had made all the work worth it!

I kept saying I probably wouldn’t do it again, but who am I kidding…I LOVED IT and CAN”T WAIT TO HOST ANOTHER!  Although I’m thinking of instead of doing it only once a year that I kind of want to do it twice a year so that we can get the fall/christmas cookies in, but we’ll see.

I had a ton of help from my best friend Lori and really couldn’t have accomplished all the baking without her!  She and her little neices took over the set up for me and forced me to leave at almost midnight the night before.

I had a coloring book area for the kids who got bored with the cookies and have some lovely artwork up on my wall at work.

I hope that everyone had as much fun that day as I did.  I only wish that I could have spent more time actually decorating with the kids.  Next time I know what needs to be done differently so that I can enjoy it even more with them!

Updates

Well its been awhile since I really put anything of substance up here for everyone.  So I’ll start off, well from the beginning, haha.

The last few months at work have been very difficult.  Many of us who have been around for several years could kind of see the writing on the wall, sort of like when you paint on a white wall with Tide detergent in college or high school and you can kind of see it in the regular light (if you use too much) but you can’t really know the message until you turn on a black light…work has been kind of like that.

Well our business is in real estate and we’re in Michigan…like I said we’ve kind of known that we aren’t in a great position.  Anyhow, several weeks ago our company had to let four people go.  This was such a shock as we are already such a small operation to begin with.  Most of us were friends with the people that were let go so that made it that much more difficult.  Just as we were adjusting to that change we were informed that regrettably the entire company had to take a pay cut.  I can’t lie and say I wasn’t devastated by this, however I’d rather have the fraction of the paycheck I’m getting versus being on unemployment right now.  The mood and tone in our office is just starting to recover, but there is still that underlying angst about the what if’s (at least there is for me).  But I’m happy to be employed still and will continue to come to work each day and do the best I can with what I’m dealing with at that moment.

I’ve been looking for a place to move into, a roomate type situation.  I thought I had found the perfect place right near downtown Royal Oak, however the room was a bit smaller then what I need and I’ve decided to keep looking for now.

I met a guy online awhile back and we never really had a great “I have to meet this person” type connection, however around Valentines Day we started talking a ton and ended up meeting.  We’ve been on a few dates, but things seem to be fizzling out.  I don’t know my real feelings on this.  I really liked this guy (I like him more then any other guy I’ve dated so far) but there is a little distance between us so it makes it that much harder.  We’ll see what happens.  In the mean time I’m still out there…if anyone knows of any good single (and at least moderately emotionally) available guys, send them my way!

I’ve changed insurances and now must go get a physical by my doctor to qualify for the lower premium.  I go on the 21st of April.  I’m realizing that I need to quit talking about getting healthy and actually do it.  I’ve tried WeightWatchers and although I love it never had stellar results.  I am going back to the gym and hope to drop about 20lbs by July…my overall weight goal is much more then that, but I’m thinking if I just take it in 20lb increments I’ll have better success.  I’m all about the silver lining in situations, my silver lining in my pay cut is that I can’t afford to do many things right now so the free gym at the Auburn Hills Community Center is going to be my source of entertainment.

“My 100 Things List” aka The Bucket List ~ I’m starting my 100 Things List.  So far I have 50, hoping to fill the other 50 in tonight.  Once I have all 100 down on paper I plan on placing my list on here and tracking what I accomplish.  Wish me luck, I’d love to be able to get the majority of the list done in the next 10 years!

My best friend recently bought a new camper so hopefully I’ll have some camping stories for everyone this summer!  I am going to hopefully try “tent” camping though this year so you know stories will come from that one!