I'd rather be...making baby face cookies

Today there was bake sale for the March of Dimes.  I love to help raise money for causes that are near and dear to my heart.  March of Dimes focuses on helping the babies make it to full-term and researching the problems that threaten babies lives.  Having two beautiful daughters of my own, I realize what a miracle each baby is.  It really hit home last year when one of my closest friends gave birth to her daughter about 6 weeks premature.  It was a scary time while Maisyn fought for survival.  She is now a happy healthy totally sweet 14 month old.  You would never guess that she is a preemie.  But until we can reduce or eliminate premature births altogether its important to keep raising funds for important research and support.

I originally was going to make some cookies with the March of Dimes symbol on them.  However with all the cookies I've made over the last week and a half I wanted to do something simple.  Its also hard to make detailed cookies during the week.  I don't get a lot of time to decorate between working and spending time with the girls!  But I still wanted to do something that went with the baby theme.  So I decided to make baby faces.  Pretty sweet huh? 

I loved making these guys!  It was also the first time I tried using food markers.  I used the black and red markers that came in the package I got at JoAnn's.  I learned that its very important to allow your cookies to dry completely before using the markers.  I iced the cookies around 9pm last night and drew their faces at 6am this morning.  So sufficed to say I didn't let them completely dry-ops!

 I had to be very, very careful with my pressure.  The curly-ques were easy since the outer edges were dry.  The hardest features to draw were the mouths.  If I pushed even just a tad too hard it would push down and distort the mouth.  Long story short-the lesson I learned was to let the icing DRY!  Which also applies to the marker too.  I didn't let them dry before I bagged them up for the bake sale.  A few of the babies arrived a little smudged :(  But lesson learned right ;)

I'd rather be...making Easter cookies

So two posts in two days!  I wanted to share the cookies I made for my grandmother and her twin sister's 80th birthday party.  Today is her actual birthday but we celebrated last weekend.  It was so special to be able to join in with family to celebrate these two amazing women! 

Then

Now

 I was asked to make cookies with a Spring theme.  I make three different designs-bunnies, sweet baby chicks, and Easter eggs.  And a special shout-out to my friend Kaitlyn!  She helped me decorate the Easter eggs.  She did an amazing job and it was fun to work on the cookies together!

No Kaitlyn didn't make these extra special cookies!  These beauties were made by my 4 year old.  She made the purple one especially for her Grandma Jan and the blue one for herself.  You can see the love and attention she put into each cookie :)

 

I hoped you enjoyed this post!  If so, I would like to encourage you to sign up for the newsletter so you can get these posts sent directly to your email :)  Just in case you're curious my next post will include my baby face cookies I made for the March of Dimes bake sale at work.

Happy baking and I hope you all have a wonderful Easter season spent with friends and family!

I'd rather be...making butterflies and flower cookies

Its been such a crazy month!  Tax time is always such a "fun" time in my world ;P  To help ease some of the stress and frustration I made cookies for my friend Annette.  Her sister is in from Arizona for a surprise visit to their mom.  Annette thought her mom would enjoy some butterflies and flowers!

Now I apologize for the not-so pretty pictures!  I was tired and was in the process of getting them boxed up before I remembered to take any pictures.  The butterflies were a little time intensive.  If you don't give darker colors a chance to fully dry before you add another color, the two colors will bleed together.

To achieve the designs on the butterfly wings I used the 'wet-on-wet' method.  This is when you add your secondary colors immediately after flooding the cookie with the first color.  I did a combination of lines and dots, then I used a toothpick to create the different designs.  I know a TOOTHPICK!  Its really that easy.  It does take some practice-which I still need-but its also really fun.  I would encourage you to give it a try!





So I told you I was kinda lazy about taking pictures this time around....can you see the butterflies peeking through the parchment paper?  I warned you ;)  These are the daisy flowers for Annette.  Growing up she loved daisies, so these were very appropriate for her.  I love it when I can make something that is personally meaningful for someone else! 

My favorite part of these flowers are the bright colors.  The bright spring colors just made the cookies all the more appealing to me.  I have to admit that I made a few extra so that I could enjoy some myself ;)  What I found interesting though were the centers.  I made the centers out of icing and covered them with white nonpareils the night before.  When I went to adhere them to the cookies I noticed that the nonpareils had changed colors.  They were really fragile but I sorta liked the affect.

Next I'll share some of my Easter cookies.  Until then...happy baking!  Bon soir!

I'd rather be...making chocolate chip cookies

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon Alice's blog savorysweetlife.com.  I was looking for a buttercream recipe and I was amazed at what I saw.  Alice made a cake to look exactly like a pair of her nephews shoes.  This might sound weird, but seriously they look just like the real thing.  Her talent is just amazing!  Anyway, I started searching some of her other recipes.  She has recipes that cover just about anything you can think of.  Being the sweet tooth that I am, I've only looked at the sweet in "savory sweet".  Thats when I found her chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Alice claims they are the BEST-and I was intrigued!  So I printed off the recipe and gave them a go.....

THEY WERE AMAZING!  I loved them.  I've made them twice now and am secretly craving some cookie dough.  I think I might have to make some more just so that I can eat the dough.   

Chocolate chip cookies are just a great comfort food.  You can't go wrong with them...the smells, the yummy gooiness always just hit the spot.  I made these this past weekend and my friend's husband couldn't stop eating them.  I'm pretty sure he had an easy dozen, if not more!  I can't wait to make my next batch.  I highly recommend that you try these too! 

Enjoy and happy baking!

PS. I also recommend Alice's buttercream recipe...its literally the best I've ever tried!

I'd rather be...making Hibiscus cookies

So I'm really starting to get to spread my cooking decorating skills.  I was asked to make cookies for a 40th anniversary party.  When I started asking Joann what she and her husband liked, she mentioned they really enjoyed visiting Hawaii.  I instantly thought of a Hawaiian themed cookie decorated in bright colors of pink, orange and yellow. 

However once I started looking online for a Hibiscus cookie cutter, I realized it was going to be hard.  It is not a common cookie cutter.  The one I did find was over $12 plus the shipping of $8.  This wouldn't do.  It was too expensive and would eat up all of my profit and then some.  So what were my options?  I had recently read about the benefits of making your own template out of plastic lids.  GREAT!  I told myself I could totally do this.  Little did I know what I was getting myself into....

First I printed off a picture of a Hibiscus.  Then I traced the image onto the clear plastic lid from a small Kool-whip container. 

I thought, "Hey this is easy I don't know why more people don't do this?"-then the fun began ;)

I didn't take into account how quickly sugar cookie dough warms up and how impossible it is to use when it is warm.  And for anyone who is familar with sugar cookie dough knows it needs to be chilled in order to use a cookie cutter.  The thing is it takes 30+ minutes to chill the dough to where you can work with it.  I can't begin to tell you how long the process of cutting these cookies took me.  I made the mistake of only dividing the dough into two large sections.  So I could be maybe cut three or four cookies-talk about a LONG night!  Finally I got 18 cut and then decided to do the rest the next day.

The next day I decided to get moving.  I cut and baked the rest of the cookies and got the first layer of icing on.

So they don't quite look like a Hibiscus yet, but that's the fun part about decorating cookies with royal icing.  I love that as you layer the cookies, the more they develop into what you picture in your mind.  It definitely reminds me of scrapbooking!  Which is my other favorite hobby!

I had to wait until the next day to the final touches as you need to wait several hours between each layer.  Finally three days after I first started (it doesn't normally take this long) on the details.  I outlined each cookie, made a star in the center, added a white stigma/pistil thingy with white nonpareils.  If you can't tell already I'm completely clueless when it comes to flowers and the proper names of their parts ;)



I also added the intials of the couple who celebrated 40 years of marriage!  In today's world 40 years is an amazing accomlishment.  I wonder at what it takes to make it through 40 years of marriage.  It makes me feel like a toddler (on the marriage scale) with the hubby and I being married for 7 years this July.  I wonder what life will have brought the hubby and I when we reach 40 years of marriage....

When all is said and done I'm not sure how often I'll hand-cut my future cookies.  Its worth it when you need an odd shape or don't want to spend the money on specific cutter.  Just be prepared to send the extra time and make sure to divide the dough into smaller, more managable portions.  I'm happy with how the cookies turned out but wish I knew some of this beforehand! 

Curlicue Bows-aka Korker Bows

 

Having two girls with a lot of hair I'm in need of a lot of options to keep the mass out of their eyes.  I love having girls with such beautiful hair-but I hate when it covers their faces.  Can we say pet-peeve?  The thing is that cute bows are so expensive!  Especially when I'm buying multiples of the really cute ones so that I can have the girls match.  Because honestly as they get older I doubt they'll let me match them, so I need to do it now while I can ;)

 

So one day while surfing I stumbled upon http://www.theribbonretreat.com/.  I read the tutorial on how to make Korker bows and decided I'm brave enough to give it a shot.  I figured if I gave it a try and it works, then I might have a solution to my problem.  And what can I say-I'm a sucker for any chance to combine my love of crafting and my love of saving money!  What follows is my attemp and might I say that it turned out pretty good!

 

The supplies I used:

 

 

 

Ribbon (duh)

Alligator clips

Dowels

Wooden clothes pins-to secure the ribbon to the dowels

Round Elastic Cord

Scissors

Fray Check-to seal the ends of the ribbon after they are cut down to size

Hot Glue Gun

Cookie Sheet-to bake the ribbon-yes I said bake the ribbon!

 

 

 

After I wrapped the ribbon on the dowels, I put them on the cookie sheet and baked them for 25 mins at 275 degrees.  Once they cooled I cut them down to about 2 1/2 inch sections-don't forget to fray check!  I used three dowels to make one ribbon...so the above picture was two bows worth of ribbon.

 

Next lay the ribbon on a small piece of round elastic cord and tie it together.  I made double knots.  Next glue the bottom side of the bow (knot side down) to the alligaor clip.  I'm still learning how to do this step without being too messy.  Definitely glue the bow with the clip open-so that you can actually use the bow you've worked so hard to make ;)

 

Without further adieu-the final result!

 

 

Munchkin is wearing her bow on St. Patricks day.  I know you can't see it very well...its sort of peek-a-booing there, but I couldn't resist sharing a moment of sisterly love!  They are sharing some crackers after a long day of playing and I just had to take a picture.  I'll try to get a better picture next time =)

 

Intro

Hi!  My name is Erin and I'm totally new at this whole blog thing ;)  I've been following a few blogs for a few months now and have decided to dip my toes into the water and see if I can contribute anything of interest.  I plan on mainly focusing on my new love decorating cookies, but also of my other baking and craft adventures.  I love to scrapbook and attempt such crafts as hairbows for my two girls (because you can never have too many but seriously can be quite the investment at times!).  I will probably start off with showing you some of the people out here that inspire me but look forward to sharing some of my own hints that I discover along the way.  I have no idea where this will take me but I hope that you enjoy what you find and I would love to hear what you have to share with me!

So to share my first link of inspiration:  http://www.sweetopia.net/.  Marian is such a talented cookie decorator and she has been my biggest inspiration!  She is so good at giving step-by-step directions on how she makes her yummy but cute creations.  I hope that I can model my blog after hers in the sense that I want to teach others what I have learned in order to be successful at whatever you want to try!