Cookies and Countdowns

It's officially December!!! The best part of December is waking up every morning to a mystery advent calendar chocolate. Will it be a chocolate snowman, or a chocolate Santa or a chocolate present or a chocolate nutcracker or a chocolate snowflake? The suspense is almost to much!
Every year my parents mail us advent calendars because they are the best parents ever. This years calendar is courtesy of Laura Secord and so far has been delicious!

December also means that it's exam season. I have a love hate relationship with exams. I'm not a stellar exam writer, so they normally bring my marks down which sucks, but it means no classes which is always a bonus. I get to sleep in and lounge around the house all day. In an attempt to be positive and ignore the impending hours and hours of studying followed by writing exams with sweaty palms crammed into a gymnasium with a couple hundred other students who are writing way more than you are which means they must know more than you do which makes you think you are going to flunk out of University for failing all your exams which in turn makes your brain go blank with panic, I am going to share with you a list of the 10 reasons I LOVE exam season. So here I go...

1. It's ok to wear the same outfit everyday....sweats.
2. I can finally justify cooking and baking instead of doing school work and since this is how I procrastinate, I eat VERY well during exams.
3. I get to sleep in past 6:30am on days I don't swim.
4. I can spend my whole day at Starbucks or Timothy's studying with java, and by studying I mean people watching and socializing with every person I know who comes in.
5. I learn all the cool things I should have learned throughout the semester which makes me hate the courses I chose a lot less.
6. I have time to catch up on all of the blogs I follow and celebrity gossip online.
7. Going to the gym or yoga is always a better choice than studying, so I finish exams a little fitter than I started.
8. I save money on my hot water bill because bathing takes a back seat. I can justify baking and cooking and yoga and the gym but somehow taking time to shower would just be too much time away from my text books.
9. I get to spend quality time with Earl since I'm home all day with him and study on the couch beside his tank.
10. I finally get my money's worth on the text books I paid hundreds of dollars for and never opened all semester.

Last year's Biochem cramming combined with too much coffee ended up like this:The plan for this year is to study less and cook more so it doesn't happen!

In other news the 12 days of cookies is officially underway! Here's a recap of the cookies so far:
Day 1: Paula's Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies
Day 2: Aarti's Gingerbread Cookies
Day 3: Barefoot Contessa's Coconut Macaroons
Day 4: Anne's Cherry-Almond Biscotti

I haven't made any of them yet, but I did make a batch of Chocolate Beet Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercreme Icing. I was under the impression that they would taste more chocolate and less beet but it was actually the other way around. I LOVE beets but I know that not everyone does, and since I don't really want to (well I actually would love to, but I would love for my clothes to actually fit more..) eat the entire batch by myself, I'm not sure I would make them again. Mostly I just wanted to use my pretty blue snowflake cupcake papers and I didn't want to study. The buttercreme was a success though! My last attempt at buttercreme was a total failure and after making it yesterday I have no idea how I screwed it up.

And now back to the books...discussing the evolution of hominids from 3 million years ago to Homo erectus. Yahoo!