Susan's Homeschool Blog

The cookies didn’t turn out. That’s the punch line.

I had gone to the craft supply store to buy two cookie cutters the shape of flowers. I thought I would make some flower-shaped cookies for the springtime, decorating them with candy on the top to represent the petals. So I baked the cookies, but they turned out poofy and ugly. So I thought to myself, “What else can I make with these stupid cookie cutters?”

Hence the birth of the cookie cutter series. I didn’t really want to blog about cookie cutters. No. I wanted to blog about the Beth Moore Bible study on the life of David, since I am learning so much spiritually. I want to process what I am learning, and I want to blog about something that matters, not drivel like what to do with cookie cutters. I’m not surprised that my readership plummeted.

So why didn’t I write about the Bible study? Because I’m just about brain dead, working on this 8-DVD set on “Time Travel: Writing Historical Fiction.” I filmed this creative writing class two years ago (and it came out fantastic!), and after putting 100 hours of editing into it and seeing no progress in the editing, I lost heart. So I put it on hold for two years. I told my sister it was like eating a plate full of chopped liver, but that the chopped liver never went down on the plate. You know, like Dante’s Inferno–one of the circles of hell where you aren’t allowed to be finished no matter how much work you do. “Zero down, infinity to go,” I heard myself say every day after hours and hours and hours of work.

I’m going to release the Time Travel set this year if it kills me. Yep. I’m going to finish before speaking at my next homeschool conference, which is in Seattle the middle of June. I will finish.

Hence the birth of the cookie cutter series, since creating magic from cookie cutters is something I can do in my sleep almost. Since creativity is my strong point. And it started off happy. But then my kids were wondering why their lunch was always shaped like a flower.

When was all this madness going to end?

When I made the Fourth of July garland out of the star cookie cutter one night, my son Stephen declared that I was a genius the next morning. But my son Bryan (almost 13) said, rolling his eyes, “Mom, it’s April.” And so it went.

You might think that 17 ideas aren’t that many, but I never told you all the ideas that failed. Like the fried egg that stuck to the cookie cutter, and I had to flick the whole thing into the sink, burning myself. Or the carefully crafted toast that I later realized was too similar to sandwiches to count.

I finally decided to put an end to it one night when I yelled to my husband who was walking by, “I’m sick of cookie cutters! I never want to see another cookie cutter in my life!” to which he replied, “I think you should ONLY blog about cookie cutters for the rest of your life. 1,976 creative ways to use cookie cutters. You would be famous. You might get on TV…”