The Every Day Project Day 241

Today we have a guest. My sister, Paula. Here is a little background on the email she sent me today.

Stanton Holly Trail is a house tour at Christmas time that has been held for 50 years. Committees decorate houses in the area of Stanton, NJ (where we grew up and Paula still lives) People then tour the houses on the 1st Saturday in December.  It is a fundraiser where the money raised goes to the Stanton Reformed Church or the Hunterdon Medical Center on alternate years. I understand they raise a great deal of money.

Stanton Reformed Church

About 8 years ago, Paula upgraded the Silver Tea portion of Holly Trail to include fancy, homemade cookies of Martha Stewart quality. They must be exactly alike in size and doneness. They are coordinated to be pleasing to the eye and palate and are packaged in a professional manner. 3 to a cellophane package with a napkin. And a logo sticker. They are of the highest quality. At Holly Trail time, Paula and a select handful of helpers, namely my dad and Joy and David Scull bake 6,000 cookies. Thats right 6,000! or more... I'm not sure because there are the ones that don't make the cut.

She uses A LOT of butter!

And she publishes a recipe book...

A sample of the fancy cookies

And she writes a history of Holly Trail...

Page 1 of the 20 page glossy booklet. 

There is much drama surrounding Holly Trail that I have been hearing over the years. Paula is also a past prez of the whole operation.( I know, it  runs in the family) Although she has been talking about it for a few years, This year she has decided to give it up.

The following is the email, I got from the Cookie Queen today. Way to go sis!

Hi all my loyal cookie supporters.

Just letting you know that I met with the woman that originally said she would like to do the cookies for the Silver Tea this year and then left me a voicemail saying that she said she would "help" and now wanted to know where my head was at in relation to making them…

I told her "NO". You would all be so proud - I didn't share much of my own information either, just the facts of how many I made. I only gave her last year's recipe book but no other handouts of spreadsheets, files or anything.

I also "encouraged" her to consider doing something else instead of cookies, not to try and replicate what I had done (thanks, Patty, for those wise words!) and we brainstormed a little about that.

Needless to say, she was OVERWHELMED! I said I would consult if she wanted to run any ideas past me but my health was my focus this year.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support during my 8 years of cookie drama!

Paula

PS
She started the conversation with, "So you don't have any kids, right? At least that's one element that you don't have to work around." Roger said I should have gotten up and left right then with a big "FU!" but remembering Marybeth saying that our mom always said "A lady never curses", I bit my tongue and let the evening progress.

By the end of two hours she found out all that I've done for HT as well as working full-time over an hour from home and now doing intensive physical therapy 3 times a week over an hour from home PLUS have a 350 tree apple orchard. She'll never underestimate people without kids again!