Cellophane update

I feel like I made a little bit of progress today on losing that cellophane wrapping. At work today I shared one tidbit about my weekend that I would consider personal. I shared it with my closest friend at work. Not all of my tidbits with all of my work pals. Just one tidbit and one work pal.

Progress.

Cellophane

I notice when I am being too transparent. I notice it right in the moment when I am saying the words that I should just not say. I hate it. Immediately after the words have left my lips I want to grab them all back. I want to be more clothed. I enjoy being nude; I don't enjoy being naked.

As I get older, I feel like there are more things in life to hold precious, to keep close. I haven't had a lot of practice at that. I know how to change habits. I explain to people everyday how to change habits. I've done it in my life before. I want to change this habit of being a piece of cellophane.

Less cellophane.

More clothing.

Habit changing commencing.

#19 on the life list (a.k.a. Cookie Challenge)

A while back I wrote about starting a life list. Back then I had only six items on my list, or perhaps only six that I was willing to share at the time. I'm up to nineteen items on my list now.

Number nineteen started brewing this past Sunday. I was having a wonky day. I dropped a thirty dollar cake in its box onto our living room floor and had a bit of a freak out over it. (The cake tasted fine that evening. It just didn't look as beautiful as it had in the store.) Anyway, after Hubby did his best at comforting me, making me laugh, and talking about how my freak out had very little to do with the cake face plant and more to do with other things, we decided to go to The Annex for a stroll.

I just love that stretch of Bloor St W! Music stores, book stores, clothing stores, furniture, food, and coffee all in one lovely five block strip. We went into BMV Books to poke around the shelves for kitchen design ideas. There's nothing like a little book store browsing to perk up my mood. Before diving in to the architecture and design books Hubby and I browsed the cookbooks. Hubby found this:



I love to bake! This book is like a gold mine for me! Since it was only nine dollars, it felt like an extra sweet deal. We bought it (along with two kitchen books).

I took a closer look at the book once I got it home. The first sixty-five pages is dedicated to discussion on ingredients, tools, technique, storage, and presentation.




The remaining 160 or so pages is recipes. Everything from fancy to savoury.




I was reading up on ingredients when our friend arrived for dinner on Sunday night. We started talking about the book, my love of all things related to baking, and it dawned on me that I could actually make every cookie in the book. Our friend pointed out that I'd better start an exercise program if I didn't want to gain 100 lbs in the process. That is an unfortunate side effect of having a sweet tooth and loving to bake.

After sleeping on the idea for a few nights, I've decided to take on my Cookie Challenge. I'm going to make every single cookie recipe in The Cookie Book - that's over 200 different cookies, according to the book. The Cookie Challenge is now number nineteen on the life list.

I do not think I will make the cookies in the order they are in the book. There's an entire kids' cookie section, so I'll have to work my way through those as occasions arise.

Train cookies:




Name cookies that could be used as place cards:




As a means to gather opinions on the cookies and avoid out growing my clothes, I shall share generously with co-workers, friends, and neighbours. One of my co-workers is already quite excited about this. Perhaps a little rating card will be developed to track my results.

The big question is: what cookie will be first?

Life list

I read an article in the Sunday New York Times a couple of weeks ago. It was about life lists. You know, the things-I-have-to-do-before-I-die list. I've been thinking about my own life list ever since.

It's not an easy list to write. I'm being very careful about what I put on the list. I'm asking myself if the idea is really, truly something that I want to make happen. If I get a hint that I have some romantic, unrealistic idea, I don't put it on the list right away. I think about it some more and really figure out what it is exactly that I want to do.

Here's some of what I have so far:

1) Travel to Prague
2) Make a tea pot on the wheel
3) Learn more about Excel than I know now (I only now the very basics)
4) Publish a crochet pattern
5) Help build a Habitat home
6) Travel to Italy (I think I want to take a culinary course there)

I've inspired someone at work to do his own list. He's really shooting high! I feel my list is a quite conservative compared to his, but I'm comfortable with how I'm approaching it.

Watch for more updates to the list!