It's always good to have goals.

As an artist, I work best when a deadline is looming before me. No deadline, no drive to get finished. It is sad, but it's true.

I started baking my Christmas cookies. When the first batch went flat and frankly, were not the best tasting, it kind of made my drive to bake them go flat. Instead, I pressed on and made the dough. Of course, it didn't strike me until later that perhaps my baking soda had gone kaput and now I've made three batches of dough -- one a double batch -- to bake in the morning.

What failed? I made a chocolate chip cookie dough base with vanilla caramel balls in it. First, the recipe called for 375 degrees, when 350 F would be just grand enough. Secondly, just the caramel balls alone wasn't enough umpf to carry them through to be a Christmas cookie box cookie. So, I've told Kim that she'll be getting them as dessert with the kids. They are edible, just not the most flavorful.

What is on deck? A double batch of Chocolate Mint Chocolate Chip cookies (yes, chocolate base with mint chips and peppermint extract), standard Chocolate Mini Chip cookies and Apple Cinnamon Craisin Oatmeal cookies. The secret behind my oatmeal cookies is that I use breakfast oatmeal. Yum.

We have plans to have Kim and her kids over for dinner. That has been moved up to 4:30 PM, since the H1N1 shot clinic is from 4-7 PM and not 4-8 PM like we had hoped. I didn't do Thursday cleaning since I was busy in the kitchen, so I'll have to bust it and get the baking done, then cleaning.

So the goals for the weekend?
- Get the batches of dough that I have made baked and hoping they won't fall flat.
- Laundry and bathroom cleaning. Scrub the floors.
- Go through the small pile of things in the basement before Hubs kicks them to the curb.
- Lowe's on Saturday morning to build a Gingerbread House.
- Winter Wonderland at K-'s school with her Santa Shop shopping.
- Festival Choir Sunday evening.

Smiles in my day:
- The librarian recognizing me and asking me where my "other half was." The funny thing was that I knew she wasn't talking about my husband! She told me about their Santa this evening, he was a friend of theirs and he had a real beard. Oh, if I weren't so parentally paranoid about pictures of K- on the internet, I would post this one. It was a luck shot that makes my heart happy.
- The principal laughing at us with the hobby horse unicorn in the school yesterday. He is such a down-to-earth great guy.
- It's confirmed. K- did move up in reading color. :) Her interim report card was good. That makes us happy.
- K- has continued to happily eat her lunch each day. Seems as though I was making a lot of fuss about something that should have been way simple. As is the case most of the time, I was over-thinking it. I have a go simple kid.
- Though my brother is sad about his loss of tools, I forgot that my sister was able to haul out as many as she could get her hands on. She was telling me today that she took boxes with her, knew the expensive stuff to grab and got all the things that she could possibly haul out with her. It isn't all of his stuff by any stretch, but at least he isn't left with absolutely nothing. He keeps reiterating the fact that he is glad that he got out alive. For those of you wondering, yes-- he is trying to get his kids.

It seems that now that the sun is falling sooner, my body seems to want to sleep sooner. Have a great weekend, my friends.

Edited to add:
It was the funky cookie and not the baking soda! The rest of the cookies are coming out fine! Hooray!!!

The end of the day total for baking:
6 1/2 dz traditional mini chocolate chip cookies
7 dz apple cinnamon oatmeal craisin cookies
8 3/4 dz chocolate mint chocolate cookies

I've even set aside 4 dozen cookies (c/m/chocolate and the only caramel cookies from yesterday that made the cut) for Festival Choir practice next week. :)