as i have mentioned before, i have a full-time office job and baking is what i do on the side to relax, spread some joy, and perhaps earn a little extra money. usually the balance is very heavily weighted towards my day job and baking is relegated to two or three days a week for an hour or two at a time….. but the holiday season, oh the holiday season….

yesterday i was wonder woman. around lunch time i went to the store to buy some more boxes, bags, cupcake containers, and of course a cart full of ingredients. when i returned home, i was working like a well-oiled machine–while the each item was in the oven i was preparing the next one. actually, i was a slightly in need of oil machine around 8pm, almost quite literally. while my friends andy and danielle were on their way over to grab some treats (on their way home from the gym, of course), i had to quickly run to the store to re-stock. if i saw myself in the store i would have been staring and most likely laughing– i was in flour covered oversized sweatpants tucked into my knee-high fake uggs, a henley covered in enough things that if i baked it a cake would pop up, and carrying about 4 lbs each of butter and powdered sugar. i was lucky that what not to wear and one of those eat healthy shows weren’t there to intervene…they just wouldn’t have understood. …and yes, i do own several aprons, but after a while i just conceded that i was going to be messy and took it off.

i was a bit more ambitious than time allowed so i had to save some of it for tonight or another day, but i managed to make: brownie truffles, sugar cookies, creme de menthe pudding cookies, peppermint bark, muddy buddies, vanilla cupcakes, peanut butter chocolate cupcakes, peppermint chocolate cupcakes, and a HUGE mess. by the end of the night my legs were aching from standing for so many hours (i even ate dinner standing up, in the kitchen), my arms felt like they were going to fall off from making icing, and i was mentally exhausted. i am a neat/clean freak for the most part, but i just had to clean up the big stuff and let it be. i threw as much as i could into the dishwasher and figured i would deal with it today. surprisingly, as exhausted as i was, i could not sleep. at all. i honestly don’t think i slept for more than maybe an hour at the most, and i only say that because i managed to have a dream. the good thing about not sleeping is that you don’t oversleep! i got up early, cleaned a bit, broke up the peppermint bark that had been firming up overnight, emptied the dishwasher/put the next load in, and arranged my packages for distribution. i even managed to get in to work early!

i distributed my goodies to a number of departments that have helped me and my team out this year and deserved some joy, plus my boss, and the ceo of the company. i am pretty secure in my belief that i bake well, but i have to admit i was a little nervous when sharing with the ceo! all in all, everything came out well and i have gotten rave reviews on just about everything!