Today was awesome.

I packed up the car, stopped by McDonald's for a sausage biscuit, and made it to Mari's by 10:30 this morning. From then until around 10:30 at night I was in full bake-mode, punctuated by two breaks: one to watch the movie Elf and one to play Harry Potter Scene It. (I won!)

I made the following cookies:

• Coconut Snowmen
• Buried Cherry Cookies
• Black-Eyed Susans
• Chocolate Crinkles
• Spritz Christmas Trees

The Buried Cherry Cookies came out better this time than they did when I made them two years ago. (Last year, instead of Buried Cherry I made some jam-filled cookies I found in Taste of Home. They weren't as good. Plus they had to be dipped in chocolate, and between the Snowmen and the Spritz I have enough dipping to do, thank you very much.) Most of the Spritz trees were covered with white chocolate and decorated with icing as usual, but I had more trees than white chocolate so some of them ended up halfway dunked in regular chocolate and some of them ended up naked.

All the cookies came out great, though. I had to get used to Mari's oven, but once I did everything went quite smoothly. At one point Mari and Brooke went out to pick up extra supplies and a pizza, and while they were gone I continued baking and watched Kyou Kara Maou 45, my favorite stand-alone episode. (Ah, Conrad, you asshat ;D) When they got back I took a break and we ate and watched Elf, which was a really good movie. I hadn't been sure what to expect from it, but it was fabulous. It never lingered on unimportant things, and every idea that was introduced got follow-through--the hallmark of a well-written story. (It also helps that the story was cute and funny and awesome.)

Later in the evening I was getting pretty tired, but I persevered. After playing Harry Potter Scene It, I continued baking while the others watched the Flash Gordon movie (with awesome music by Queen). At some point Brooke made homemade Twinkies with her brand new Twinkie set from Mari and Kelly. I was cookie'd out so I took my Twinkie home. I'll probably eat it tomorrow :)

By the end of the night I had managed to finish all my cookies, and I packed them up in tins and handed them out to Mari, Chris, and Brooke, taking most of the rest home in bags. When I got home I gave a tin to Cheryl and Reid.

Cheryl spent the day baking, too, and still isn't quite done. Meanwhile, Reid made chili, which was fantabulous. Hopefully I will be able to eat more of it for lunch tomorrow.

Number of pictures taken by me on this most satisfying of days? Zero. But Brooke took some, and hopefully I'll be able to share them.

And that's about it. I feel very accomplished and very tired. Good night, world :)