Visions of Sugar Plums

 In an empty drawer in the cabinet we are using to hold up the sink I've been hoarding things for the past few weeks.

 I only have this much counter space left but for some reason I thought it would be a good time to learn how to do some fancy cookie icing. I've been watching people ice cookies every night on You Tube so of course I thought it was something I could actually do. They make it look so darn easy.

I baked the sugar cookies the day before using the complicated chilling and rolling directions to keep them flat.

 Yesterday I made some gingerbread using the same method.

 I made royal icing using Wilton's meringue powder. So far so good, I thought.

 The outlining took a while to get used to but it wasn't awful.

 The flooding went better than I expected so I as feeling pretty confident. I even bought one of those cookie platforms that spin. I was in cookie decorating heaven and then......

 I got to the part where you had to add the details and everything that could go wrong did. This is where I found out I had no talent for this sort of thing. My piping was terrible.

 When I was done I had two trays of the ugliest, gloppiest cookies you've ever seen.  They looked nothing like the vision I had in my head of the beautiful cookies I was going to share with the neighbors.

I wasted a whole day on this adventure but at least I got a good laugh out of it. I was thinking of this the whole time. That's what I get for thinking that watching someone do something is the same as being able to do it.