On the First Day of Christmas, My True Love Nowhere Around to See...

...I tried a little cooking and Christmas gift making, but now need a lot of therapy.
Ahhh! The hope was to finish up some of my Christmas gifts today, but I just wasn't on target...I'm having a little pity party for myself, which is not really the best way to kick off the serious Christmas festivities! I also have quite a few gifts left to make, and I'm just not moving like I want to be!
First....I needed to make a few little treats for the office staff. I don't know why I thought chocolate dipped pretzels seemed like a good idea....I remembered now that dipping pretzels is actually a total, major pain in the neck (for me, I'm not the best at this). I just don't get along with chocolate, and the division is getting deeper. In particular, tonight I am mad at white chocolate-why does it overheat so quickly? I could never get the temperature right, so I spent an hour trying to rescue a few, and spreading overcooked white chocolate. The red came out perfectly, but when it came back to trying to drizzle the white (batch two)...same problem, even carefully heating, so I ended up making 'dots' because it was the texture of molding chocolate. Minus the frustration factor, and many fewer pretzels being made than anticipated based on the excess of time I actually spent on five per person....they came out OK....all things considered. Note to self-chocolate dipped pretzels are not my friend. P.s. Self, look up tips for working with white chocolate b/c 'self' still has a bag to use.
My teaching partner found these little stockings at Target to put the pretzels in, this makes them more fun.


I had some left over chocolate, so I made a cake ball, I saw this idea on bakerella, and didn't feel like making a whole batch, so....how about just one? OK (I have some frozen cake balls still in the freezer, they freeze well, and I pull them out at random times like this).

OK, and then...it got worse! I used a different chocolate cake batter to make these cupcakes (below), and they are sooooooo dry. The beater broke while trying to make the icing, so I had to stir it by hand, and whoops, I used the wrong 'butter flavor,' so it was a little off (there is one brand I don't like as much as Wilton's). The icing bag was cut weird so it came out in a collapsed circle, and was just not piping on right, and then as I tried to dip my high hats, the tops were so heavy, they were falling off. The stars look like cheese. I made them for my Mom to take to coworkers because I loved them so much last time I made them, and now, I'm not so thrilled, but can't imagine throwing away an evenings worth of work, especially since there will be no more evenings that I don't have a full schedule-but it's hard to send someone a gift that does NOT taste good! .

Oh well, I'll be over this as soon as I hit 'publish post.' That is my story of the first night of Christmas, and I know....all the frustrating stuff is out of the way! Yay for fun days to come! Can you tell I don't do well with failure? I am my own worst critic, but I need to get it out there b/c more than I like critiquing myself, I don't enjoy being criticized by other, so I have to let you know I know what the problem is before you can tell me there is a problem-see, this whole cooking mishap was just the tip of that therapy iceberg.