If you bought us a wedding present, then yes, I am finally using it

The FRG luncheon was a success and everything was SO PRETTY. I finally had a reason to bust out all of my Christmas-y china and serving pieces from our wedding and use them. That in itself felt good. Except the part where I had to scrub the dust off of everything. That was kind of a hassle. But actually USING those dishes felt wonderful. I had everything ready a little before everyone arrived, and as I was going to grab my camera and take pictures of the glorious setup, one of the girls rang the doorbell. Got there early to help! GAH. So I didn't take pictures of any of it. But you'll HAVE to take my word for it when I say that I could have invited Martha Freaking Stewart to this luncheon and I would not have batted an eye. It looked that good.

That morning I proceeded to dip everything in chocolate.

Before:

After:

True, I did not get to dip too many pretzels or ANY potato chips, but that's because I ran out of chocolate. I bought out our measly Kroger last week and thought that would be enough. So I set out what I had and I will dip the pretzels and chips later this week for Steve.
Dipping all of that probably took a total of 20 minutes. And that includes melting the chocolate. I was hemming and hawing for some time about actually DOING it, because I really hate to be interrupted during something that requires my full attention like this. If you take too long dipping, the chocolate starts to harden back up, and then you gotta re-melt everything and stir and dip and the chocolate is never as nice as when you melt it the first time. So I got up super-early that morning and did it before Sam woke up.

Tip: When dipping the butterfinger bites, it is WAY easier to just throw 4 in the bowl at once and then use a FORK to turn them over and fish them out with rather than using tongs. I don't know why this idea never occurred to me before, but I would like to save someone else the trouble. (Mama)

One thing that caught me off guard about the luncheon was the mass chaos that toddlers bring to the table. I have my house secured so that Sam can't get to the things that I know he wants to get into, but I guess I never really considered what OTHER kids might want to get into... For instance... my nativity set.. every ornament hanging on my tree... candy canes...

We have a giant bucket o' toys in the living room that we use to house all of Sam's toys. He doesn't play with the majority of them, but I am not exaggerating when I say that every single toy was pulled out and strewn across my living room like a Cat 5 hurricane had just blown through. Candy cane was ground into my one poor patch of carpet downstairs. Ornaments were broken (I tried to put breakable ornaments higher up on the tree and soft ornaments on the bottom, but somehow a child managed to reach pretty high.). And they all fought over this tiny little stuffed pug.

Before everyone got here I was all, "HAHAHA look at me! My house is so clean and beautiful! I won't have to clean anything all weekend! I'm so brilliant!" And afterwards, as I was sitting in what was left of my living room, wondering what that mystery stain on the couch was, I realized that maybe cleaning was not the brightest thing to do before little people came over to play.

I finally got all the toys sorted today and the Christmas china is put back in its place. We are still eating leftover chicken salad, but it's pretty durn tasty so I can't complain there. Plus, there is no shortage of chocolate-covered things to snack on. So obviously, LIFE IS GOOD.

While having our little FRG pow-wow, we decided on making tori ornaments for our Christmas fundraiser. (The Japanese tori symbol is used to represent the Rakkasans.) I found a tori cookie cutter at the museum gift shop the other day and decided to try it out on some sugar cookies before using it for the dough ornaments we plan on making this week.

Normally, I am very anti-sugar cookie. And not just because the cookie itself contains no chocolate. No, I really hate the hassle of a sugar cookie because they are so time-consuming and I never figured out a way to make cookie-cutting EASY. Well. I read the simple instructions that came attached to my new cookie cutter and felt like the biggest IDIOT ever. "Chill cookie dough for 3-4 hours before rolling out and cutting." Wow. That would have made some previous attempts a HELLUVA lot easier. HOW DID I NEVER KNOW THAT???

I always rolled out the dough as soon as I was done mixing and proceeded to curse at the flimsy shapes that never seemed to come out right. I followed the instructions yesterday and made BEAUTIFUL cookies.

Still not the prettiest... I've got work on transferring them from cutting board to cookie sheet..

All sprinkled up..

Looks like Second Baby wanted in on this picture..

While they are so cute and would make GREAT fundraising items (can you picture them wrapped up in cellophane with something like "We think you Rakk!" printed on a tag?), they are very time-consuming and I am not willing to put that kind of effort into something that people may or may not buy. Our FRG is kind of notorious for having next to no spousal support, so I want to save myself from calories that do not include chocolate (because I know I will end up having to take all these cookies home with me. Gah.).
I currently plan on giving most of them to my neighbors.

I'm just so happy that I now know the secrets to sugar cookies! Only took me 25 years to learn!