{"id":339,"date":"2008-01-17T17:44:11","date_gmt":"2008-01-17T22:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forgetful.ca\/2008\/01\/17\/the-great-cookie-cat-astrophe\/"},"modified":"2008-01-17T17:44:11","modified_gmt":"2008-01-17T22:44:11","slug":"the-great-cookie-cat-astrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"The Great Cookie Cat-astrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m finally ready to talk about it…but just barely ready.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When planning Jaia’s 1st birthday party I\u00a0was at a loss for a ‘theme’.\u00a0 Too young yet to know who most of the cartoon characters were\u00a0that covered the usual party supplies, I needed to come up with something a little different, but child-party friendly.\u00a0 All of the non-cartoon supplies were very adult-New-Years-party centered and I figured that wouldn’t be Jaia’s bag either.<\/p>\n

Then it hit me.\u00a0 Quite literally hit me in the face.\u00a0 Snowflakes.\u00a0 Jaia was born in the middle of a snow\/rain storm (though I didn’t even catch a glimpse of it thanks to 30 hours in labour) and so it seemed quite fitting.\u00a0 So I started busying myself looking for all the right snowflake elements.\u00a0 And lo and behold, they were everywhere (not surprising considering the season).<\/p>\n

But there was one critical piece that alluded me.\u00a0 The giant snowflake cookie cutter that I needed to make the little loot bag\/give-aways I was planning.\u00a0 I searched the stores in Virginia over Christmas and found nothing.\u00a0 I searched stores in Ottawa once I returned and again, nothing.\u00a0 My ‘piece de resistance’ was nowhere to be found and we were running out of time.<\/p>\n

And then when we were en route to Orleans on January 29\u00a0we heard a terribly annoying radio commercial for the store Ma Cuisine.\u00a0 I had forgotten all about that place!\u00a0 We called and the girl on the phone said they had a 5 inch snowflake cookie cutter in stock!\u00a0 A quick detour and 20 minutes later we pulled up.\u00a0 I raced inside only to find that the girl on the phone was wrong.\u00a0 The owner, who was working the floor, didn’t think they had anything like that, but said she’s check the back anyway.\u00a0 After 10 looooooooooong minutes, she returned holding a beautiful, 5 inch snowflake cookie cutter.\u00a0 Excellent.\u00a0 We were on our way.<\/p>\n

Now, I had never made anything like these cookies before.\u00a0 We were using Dan’s mom’s no fail recipe and I even enlisted Sonja Lasagna (baker extraordinaire – seriously) for some help.\u00a0 And thankfully I did.\u00a0 I somehow totally messed up the first batch by the third ingredient and had to start all over.\u00a0 But once we got rolling, we were unstoppable.\u00a0 After one or two glasses of wine we had 40+ giant snowflake cookies cooling on the table.<\/p>\n

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Step 2:\u00a0 Icing the cookies.\u00a0 \u00a0After they have cooled overnight, you can begin work on icing them.\u00a0 I wanted to do a layer of white\/violet icing and then pipe a white\/violet snowflake design on them.\u00a0 So\u00a0I started with the base.\u00a0\u00a0I whipped up some icing and went to work.\u00a0 They were starting to really come together….<\/p>\n

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And I let Dan take care of piping the snowflake design.\u00a0 My first (and only) attempt was pathetic.\u00a0 Who knew high school drafting courses would eventually help with cookie decorating?<\/p>\n

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And there we were.\u00a0 It was New Year’s Eve and we\u00a0were way ahead of schedule on everything.\u00a0 The only task left was to bag the cookies and tie them up with purple ribbon the next morning.\u00a0 Now we were free to relax and enjoy dinner, a glass of wine and each other’s company as we waited first our first toast at 11:51 pm (the time Jaia was born) and then again at midnight.<\/p>\n

We went to bed feeling confident that all would be finished and ready by the time our guests started rolling in around 11 am.\u00a0 Jaia woke up around 6, her usual time, and as she was finishing her bottle, we heard a huge crash in the kitchen.\u00a0 In our house this is not unusual.\u00a0 With two adventurous cats and a dog that has made it his mission to to kill one of\u00a0said adventurous cats, the early morning crashes and booms are common around this place.\u00a0 But this time Dan and I looked at each other, unsure of what that one was.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A little while later I came downstairs, turned the corner into the kitchen only to find………………..half of the cookies on the floor…in pieces.\u00a0 One of the cats had obviously jumped on the counter, not expecting it to be covered in cookies, panicked and took them down with him\/her.<\/p>\n

I was not pleased.\u00a0 I was beyond not pleased.\u00a0 I won’t lie ..there were tears.\u00a0 Yes, they were just cookies, but these cookies were three days in the making and in less than two hours, guests would start\u00a0arriving.<\/p>\n

Once I regained composure, I\u00a0bagged up the survivors and made the final preparations…<\/p>\n

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(including a do-it-yourself cupcake decorating station for the older kids)<\/p>\n

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But then Mother Nature stepped in and brought me more snowflakes.\u00a0 Mountains of them.\u00a0 The melty kind.\u00a0 And\u00a0they also kept half of the guests from being able to join us.\u00a0\u00a0It totally sucked on one hand, but was a huge stroke of luck on the another (the hand holding half as many cookies as it should have been holding).\u00a0 We actually ended up with 1 leftover.<\/p>\n

So there you have it.\u00a0 The Great Cookie Cat-ass-trophe of 2008.\u00a0 And in the end it was an excellent lesson learned…Cats are jerks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m finally ready to talk about it…but just barely ready.\u00a0\u00a0 When planning Jaia’s 1st birthday party I\u00a0was at a loss for a ‘theme’.\u00a0 Too young yet to know who most of the cartoon characters were\u00a0that covered the usual party supplies, I needed to come up with something a little different, but child-party friendly.\u00a0 All of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[6,37,41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}