Day 15, Santa Suit, Camera Strap, and Cookie Blunder!

Day 15. Oh what can I say, I think my mind is just overloaded right now :P

I'll start by sharing one wall of my family room. I hung my felt Santa suit on my quilt rack and added some greens above it. It's simple, but that was my theme this year.

The other day I finally made a padded camera strap for my aging camera. It's hard to take a pic of it because it is attached to my camera ;) I used some squirrel printed linen that I ordered years ago from Super Buzzy. It's super simple, but cute and it covers the ugly black nylon strap.
And now if you want a laugh, read on.....My Big cookie blunder...

I decided to make cookies and bring them to everyone we are visiting. Went to the grocery store and bought chocolate chips, butter( I usually buy store brand, but they had Land o Lakes on sale), flour, and eggs(I had everything else I needed at home). I get home and instead of using my normal chocolate chip cookie recipe, I decided to try the one on the bag of Ghiradelli chips I just bought....

I knew I needed a lot of cookies, so I doubled the recipe. Added the butter(4 sticks would be double, so in go 1,2,3,4), added the sugars....hmmm, it's not getting "fluffy" like the recipe says, But I press on, adding ingredients. By the time I get to adding the dry ingredients(with 6 cups of flour), my poor old(and I'm talking 25 yr old) Kitchen Aid mixer is actually moaning and straining, the dough is so thick and dry. But, no, I don't think something is wrong, I just keep on going. Add in the chocolate chips and chopped pecans. Get out my pretty red cookie scoop and make nice round(dry) mounds on the cookie sheets. Bake for the 12 minutes like they say. Check, nope, they haven't even started to spread, they are still mounds. Again, Hmmmmmm? After 25 minutes of baking, they finally appear to be done. Take them out, let them cool. Well, I better try one if they are going to be gifts. Uh, not sure what to think, they aren't bad, but they certainly aren't excellent. And they are a little crunchy, I prefer a soft cookie.

They look nice and are thick, but there taste is just lacking. I kept thinking about the ingredients and couldn't figure out what the problem was. I just kept yelling at myself for Doubling a recipe that I had never tried before. And how could they put such a blah recipe on a bag of chips???.....

Then it hit me! It's not the recipe, it's ME!!! Well, I'm blaming Land O Lakes. The boxes of butter I bought were some new half stick sizes, so you get 8 little sticks of butter in a box instead of 4 regular sticks. I was so caught off guard with those little sticks and wondering why anyone would want them, that while I was putting them in the mixer, I didn't realize that I should have put in all 8 to double the recipe!!!! UGH! So now I have dozens of "OK" cookies, but definitely not gift worthy. Guess the kids are having cookies and milk after school. And I still don't have cookies to bring.
And a quick glimpse from this morning... Why buy toys, kids enjoy boxes so much more :)
Have a great day,

Tiff