12 Days of Cookies, in retrospect on day 13

Here are some important lessons I've learned over the past couple of weeks:

Don't embark on a cooking extravaganza without knowing if you have at least half of the needed ingredients. Day 4 is not the time to be scraping the bottom of the flour container.

Be sure that your spouse knows that when you say "cocoa," you mean COCOA not hot chocolate. This will eliminate yet another trip to the store during the busiest time of the year.

If you are asked to bring 3 dozen of these various cookies to Granny's holiday party, be sure NOT to leave them on top of the fridge. You'll just have to eat them later which is NOT a good thing if you have had the equivalent of a sugar IV since Halloween.

If you plan to deliver some of these little morsels to the neighbors, plan accordingly. In other words, when you only have 2 neighbors that you give baked goods to, make small batches.

Don't expect pre-schoolers to care after about day 7.

Don't expect pre-schoolers to keep their hands out of the batter or the frosting. They won't.

Make sure that all pre-schoolers involved have washed their hands. Even then, don't tell the neighbors that the kids helped because your neighbors aren't stupid. They've had kids. They know that hands and fingers were in the batter and what kinds of germs are in there even if you did wash hands several times...

Find new recipes, but don't forget to enjoy the family "classics."

Oh, yeah. I'll do this again.