It has been raining literally all weekend. Since Friday…all day, all night. Lots of rain. Which I am definitely not complaining about because last summer was so darn dry. So I hope we get plenty of water, just no flooding.
With the exception of hitting a few garage sales, we stayed in all weekend in an attempt to stay dry. And some degree of nesting must be hitting because after I put kiddo to bed on Friday, I stripped our pantry. I took out every single can, bottle, jar and envelope. This meant destroying every bit of counter space and ignoring the dishes (more), but it was worth it. The good news is, I didn’t end up throwing out much. Just two cans and three boxes of jello, all VERY expired. This may not seem like the more creative endeavour, but it really will make cooking much, much easier.
Case in point, today the kiddo and I made awesome monster cookies. Because I had just done a pantry re-organization, I knew exactly what I had and where to find it. A while back I read a very short article about non-negotiables. The questions asked at the end was what three things are non-negotiable in your life. It was an easy choice for me: family, creativity and good food. So when I can combine two of those things, that’s bliss.
She loves running the mixer, which I let her do with a lot of close supervision. She’s smart, but she’s still three. I would hate for a bad run-in with a kitchen appliance to ruin her love of cooking. But once the dough was made, she got to measure and mix all her own toppings. So we had m&m / reeses pieces / almond / sunflower seed / sprinkle cookies for daddy and mint / chocolate chip / sprinkle cookies for us. Want to exercise your patience? Let a small child operate a cookie scoop unassisted. When I start getting bored and want to step in, I just remind myself of the things I have learned first-hand not to do. There is a very fine line between helping and interfering. The best reward is seeing how proud she is of her misshapen, crowded cookies. They all taste the same in the end anyway!
Besides fun baking with a kid, I also have my Creativity Cure to work on tonight. It’s taking some work, but I think it’s helping. Delving into reasons for my ongoing creative blocks and recent slackiness has been pretty helpful. And I still have five weeks to go. Best of all, the process requires hands-on time doing something you love; the very definition of a spoonful of sugar. So now I had better get on that.
I hope you all had a fabulous weekend as well!
daydreamhouse 
Yay for an organized pantry! That’s swoon-worthy…
And yay for wonderful moments with tiny people! I baked cookies with the wee nephew a few months ago and he still talks about it. I really must do more of that with him. His job were locking/unlocking the mixer, rolling dough balls and the fork-squishing. Best day ever.