Christmas Eve...

Victor and Charlotte made cookies for Santa tonight....

Charlotte worked on one of the two owls Eldin left for her to paint herself...

Yoda, Yoda, Yoda...

Wordless Wednesday...

Cookie exchange 2011....

Great time this afternoon at Rachel's....all the folks were from TriQuint except for me...I've met most of them thru Relay. Each of us made 6 cookies for each participant....judging on Best Tasting, Most Original and Best Presentation....

THANK YOU Barb & Rachel for arranging it...it was FUN...I'm a little tired of sweets right now...but totally worth it!

All the bakers and a few others...

tons of yummy cookies....Took this before all the cookies were out...

These were the sampling cookies...

Holy cow...a whole lot off cookies!

Barb, Rachel and I before all the guests arrived.

Baby Abigail was SO good, especially when Auntie Beth was holding her

Becca & Maddy hanging out...

Four musketeers....Aiden, Matthew, Charlie & Maddy

TriQuint's Bake for Hope 2011...

Great time today with Rachel, Dana, Barbara, Rosemary and Dean at TriQuint for their 2nd annual Bake for Hope. Here are photos from last year's event.

35 entries, amazing. My favorite presentation wise were the first two photos. Those cream puff swans...WOW!

I only sampled the Cake Pop's with the smiley faces, they were AWESOME!

It was a lot of fun. We sold a lot of coffee cozies and we are officially out of Tiny Turtles for a Cure (until further notice)...

Cookie time...

Victor and Charlotte made cookies for Santa this afternoon! :) I'm sure he's gonna love them all! :)

It was GOOD!

The Candy Cane Cake! Charlotte gives it two sporks up! :)

Ten on Tuesday: Kathy baked edition...

1. Charlotte's school program is tomorrow night, we can't wait!
2. Our real Christmas Tree will be decorated tonight!
3. Victor and I will be celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary on Friday! YEAH US!
4. Almost done with my Costco photo gifts....(ALMOST)...
5. Oregon Ducks are going to the National Championship on January 10th!
6. Another Craft Fair tomorrow at work, this time at my campus....
7. Realized late last night (after Charlotte was in bed) that I have a very, VERY long list of "Creative folks" on my blog-roll that I seriously spend too much looking at, but LOVE all the creative bloggers out there.
8. Is looking forward to a couple nights away to the coast, just the three of us.
9. Still sewing Letty's Bags....
10. I BAKED last night (Candy Cane Cake, a la Betty Crocker)....got the recipe from Shelley and can't wait to see what my coworkers think of it...if it's a hit, I might be making another one tonight for my Relay peep's meeting Thursday.

(note--this is NOT the final product)...just the cooling off stage and NO, it doesn't look like the pretty picutre on BC website, but that's OK by me!

Post 2,000 and Bakerella awesomeness...

Holy cow....this is my 2,000 post...yes, that's right 2,000 posts! I started this blog in April '06, right before Charlotte was born....2,000 posts later, it's going strong.

Mary, MJ and I had a BLAST this morning, early afternoon getting to meet the one and only Bakerella. After my last attempt to get a cookbook signed (Pioneer Women), when I showed up at what I thought was a reasonable time, only to discover I was WAY too late for the queue...there was NO WAY I was missing out today. Mary & I got there two hours early and MJ was closely behind....the folks in line were all so nice, we just started talking and even added one of them as a friend on FB! We were #4, 5, 6 in line...so we got to get her autograph while she was still nice and raring to go.

I first saw Bakerella's blog back in April '09...my friend Shelley had posted a link to this blog entry: Cute for a Cure. My love for her blog thus began...I'm an avid follower and when I found out she was gonna start her book tour in Portland, I KNEW I had to be there!

Such a super nice gal. One of her best friends was traveling with her and taking photos, see the gal in the 2nd photo (walking thru the mall with her) and in the 7th photo (standing up on the chair making a silly face).

We met her NUMBER ONE FAN...who was first in line...she created the AWESOME giant cup cake with mini-books of Cake Pops...see photos 9, 10 & 11....totally cool. I didn't make any Cake Pops, but I did give Bakerella one of my Tiny Turtles for a Cure, she smiled and thanked me.

The entire experience was great. Hanging out before and having lunch with two of my buddies made it even more fun! Plus, I had just received my 20-year Intel AmEx gift card that you can only use in a few stores, and Williams-Sonoma was one of them....so I didn't spend any of my own money today--YAHOO!

Bakerella, thanks for all your creative goodness..YOU ROCK the Cake Pops world! Why I smiled today...see all of the above and below...FUN times with good friends!