Just As I YAM

Gotta love LoVe LOVE FlyLady!

(For those of you who are not of the proper Flyspective, let me explain. FlyLady helps those of us who are organizationally challenged to fool the rest of you into thinking we are minor geniuses at home management. And, most of the time, it works!

Anyway, right now FlyLady is taking all of her Flybabies (that's people like me) on a "Holiday Cruise". The idea is to do my prep for the holidays a little at a time (and not freak on December 20th when nothing is done and everything is happening, partying and baking all at once!) In preparation for my "cruise" I started on my checklist. I also started reading all of the "SHE shouldn't" pages... They sound too much like my life!

And so, here are some stories of my true nature. Only my family will not be shocked at the following... the rest of you, well, it's "Just as I Yam" time...

Gift giving award:
My family does give practical joke presents, but these were totally errors of late night senility. I had purchased records (back in the day - as one daughter called them "those big black CDs") for my dad and for my sister. They were of rather different genres. I also had purchased clothing for my nephew and my mom. They were of different sizes (and styles) but were packaged in identical department store gift boxes. I was wrapping presents VERY VERY late on Christmas Eve and of course I got the tags wrong. On all four of those presents.... which prompted my brother-in-law to say, "I'll have what she's drinking!"

This is too easy... let's move on to another category:

House cleaning award:
Long before I met my beloved bearded spouse, I was hosting a party for my friends in the church singles group. I had a coffee table which had lots of nicks and dents in it, and wanted to cover up the places where the veneer/stick on paper had been chipped off. So, I got out my markers and "colored" the "grain" back on my coffee table. Looked great... EXCEPT... that I used washable markers. Oh yes, I did... and when I sat on the edge of the coffee table chatting with my first guest, one of my best friends (in my white wool Christmas pants and cute holiday sweater, I might add) I discovered that the marker had pretty much rubbed off and I had an unintentional pattern on my pants...and my cute holiday sweater... which both quickly went in the dry cleaning pile... And the table, which looked as bad as ever, got covered with a large towel. And no, I didn't see that I had a striped behind until my next guest arrived, and the two of them laughingly helped me cover up my errors.

Culinary mistake award:
I was making Russian tea cakes, which is probably a family favorite, particularly when I make them into "Chocolate Sugar Bombs". (FYI - The link takes you to my OAMC pages on my other web site.) I followed the recipe carefully, for a change, and did the double dusting of confectioners sugar, once when warm from the oven, once when cooled. It coated really nicely for a change, which surprised me, but I chalked it up to humidity. Just because the cook ALWAYS samples her wares before serving them, (yes even cake batter with eggs, who cares about salmonella??) I popped a cooling cookie in my mouth. And gagged... Who knew??? The container which was labeled "C.S." by my own hand was NOT "confectioner's sugar" but "Corn Starch!" GAG!!! SPEW!!! Yup. Tossed the whole batch of those puppies into the trash and started over. THIS time I found the true "CS" container. And yes, the two canisters are now labeled with their full Christian names...

Culinary mistake award #2:
I tried to bake yams because I thought they would be more healthy and different from the usual recipe. I washed them and planned to bake them whole. I did not trim off the extra root hair parts. I put them on the bottom of my gas oven. Did you know that root hairs of yams burn a pretty green?? And that some smoke alarms do not reset until you pull out the battery? I opened a can instead and heated them with brown sugar on them. Not as pretty. Much less smoke! No one was fooled by my scented candles trying to cover up the smell... NOPE. Just as I YAM. I was caught...

Now I wonder what I will manage to cook up this year... I'll keep you posted!

From our home to yours...
Deb