Day 5 (February 7), 6:00 am.
iPhone alarm sounds off, but there's no point to re-setting it as I "slept" fitfully all night and, though exhausted, I'm strangely wide awake. The pent-up enthusiasm about the start of today's classes is the clear culprit.
Day 5 (February 7), 8:00 am.
I meet Claudia in the classroom to oversee the day's icing prep and to set out my suitcase-full of stencils, stamps, and another cookie decorating paraphernalia that the students will have to share. I also put out the few sample projects that I was able to carry on the plane. (I always like students to see the end goal before the decorating gets underway, and there's no better road map than the real thing.)
Sample cookie place card project.
Flower basket project pieces, poised for assembly.
Fortunately, all of my projects arrived in Barcelona unscathed except for the base of the wedding cake box, which popped a seam (as I mentioned before) and also managed to crack fully up one side. But no matter; it still holds together to make a decent enough display. My jumbo 3-D egg is also a little shaky on its stand. I cheat and reinforce it with a little hot glue, as there's not enough time for icing "glue" to dry firmly enough before the start of class.
Wedding cake cookie box project, barely keeping it together.
Two members of the Cookie Gal Dream Team (the two MercÈ's) also arrive early to help with icing and last-minute setup, such as dressing each work station with a photo of the finished projects . . .
Individual work station.
and setting out the bright candy-colored pink and green aprons!
Final table setup.
We somehow manage to sneak in a few more commemorative group shots 
before students arrive to start Day One of this two-day class about 3-D cookie construction.
Claudia Cetro, host and organizer extraordinaire, right. Me, desperately needing a haircut, left.
Day 5 (February 7), 10:00 am to 6:45 pm.
Phew! It was a long - but fulfilling - day of decorating with just one half-hour lunch break! But we ended up exactly where I had hoped, with all of the necessary project pieces outlined and flooded (and quick-dried in dehydrators) and others stenciled and detailed.
The only (minor) complications:
- One (US-manufactured) dehydrator started smoking like a chimney because we forgot to use a US-Euro adapter. (But Claudia, as always, came to the rescue!)
- I had to learn to breathe between sentences (not my usual M.O.) in order for the translator to make sense of me. (I finally got into the right rhythm about one hour in!)
Snafus aside, the end results were pretty darn good! Some samples:
My work in process (aka WIP).
A student's WIP.
Another student's WIP.
Tomorrow, we finish detailing the wedding cake boxes and baskets, and then assemble all of the projects - a grand total of four boxes and one basket with filler cookies for all of them. It's another ambitious agenda, but based on today's performance, I have a good feeling that we're up for the challenge!
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