Christmas Disaster

Merry Christmas, everyone! Or Hanukkah. Or Kwanzaa. Or...whatever you celebrate. Or don't celebrate. Anyways, I hope yesterday was a great day for all of you! To reflect the Christmas spirit, I decided to bake and decorate some Christmas cookies! I mean, how could someone not enjoy themselves at the thought of making holiday cookies for Santa, right?
Wrong.
It's not that I didn't have fun with the cookies, it's just that I sorta completely failed. The technique that I decided to use while making these Christmas cookies is called painting with egg tempera.

"Made with egg yolk and supermarket food coloring, tempera has been around since the earth cooled and creates an old-fashioned-looking, shiny painted surface" (Fryer and Peterson 92). The idea of egg tempera is to separate an egg yolk from the white, beat the yolk, and divide it into up to three bowls. Food coloring is then added (Fryer and Peterson 92) (It is noted that you "Use a few drops to make saturated colors, but be aware that because you're mixing the very yellow egg yolk with the coloring, you're final coloring is never going to be quite true to the original") (Fryer and Peterson 92).

The egg tempera actually worked really well. The colors were pretty vivid, and the color actually puddled up into the imprints from the cookie cutters, which looked really good.

My downfall in the cookies was that I didn't exactly pay attention to or heed the directions for the cookie dough. The directions on it only said to roll the dough into balls and bake them as that. However, I decided that it would work fine to shape them with cookie cutters. This failed. Miserably. Hence the finished product:

Obviously, the cookie dough did not allow the cookies themselves to be baked into shapes. On the bright side, however, the egg tempura worked well. While the shapes and designs of the cookies that were painted with the tempera are not prevalent, the tempera is bright and vivid.
Therefore, this cooking experience taught me the importance of paying attention to the directions. No matter what they are. I realize that, while some directions may have loopholes or be more of guidelines, they are there as the best known way to do the relevant activity. Therefore, for the best results, they should be followed. And there may not be a greater example to this than baking!
If you're wondering, though...the cookies were still delicious. I don't think you can screw up a cookie that badly. :)
What have you completely botched because you didn't adhere to the directions?

Fryer, Janice, and Valerie Peterson. Cookie Craft. Pownal, VT: Storey, 2008. Print.