Spring Birds (April 2015)

Ah, nothing says springtime like some 2-tone birdies.  

(Thank you scrapbook paper section at Jo-Ann for my inspiration!)

       

Love these cute mini flowers with white non-pareils.  

Such an impact on the platter using all those leftover icing colors!

A Visit to the Lake (July 2014)

Some of our family's dear friends have a beautiful lake house to which we were invited for a weekend this past July.  It is a stunning home with even more amazing hosts.  We went tooling around on their boat, ate meals overlooking the lake on their deck, and stayed up late chatting and eating popcorn.  But, the best element of the weekend was introducing our kids to their grandkids...they clicked immediately, and by the end of the 2-day stay, they were crying about how much they would miss each other.  Ooh, maybe we'll have another reason to visit next year...??

I couldn't arrive empty-handed, so I tried out some ideas for a lakehouse theme.

I started with a design for a motorboat.  The actual picture I used for inspiration I had found while searching Google images.  It was a picture of a resort's logo that I adapted to work on a cookie.  I did this one a little backwards, starting with the water, but then working on the boat, filling in the yellow background last, and adding birds using the food marker pen.

SemiSweet Designs is another amazing blog I go to for inspiration.  He had created beach umbrella cookies using a spider web cookie cutter (genius!).  I know this family loves the yellow umbrellas on their deck, so I thought I'd make the platter more personal for them with this design.

 While looking at the same post from SemiSweet Designs, I saw his amazing Adirondack chairs using Sweet Sugarbelle's school bus cookie cutter (which I happen to own!).  He is so creative!  A no-brainer...I had to try them.  He had the luxury of using a Kopykake projector to make the design perfect, but I free-handed to the best of my ability all with 20-second icing.  Overall, I think they're recognizable.

These life jackets were my own design, however.  I took my t-shirt cookie cutter, and just cut off the arms prior to baking. They were actually pretty simple, but they turned out to be my favorites of the group.  I started with the orange vest, piped a bit of blue down the middle, and let them dry.  Later, I added yellow stripes and details with a food marker pen.

 Since none of my platters are complete without some mini options, I added some anchor designs, inspired by Sweet Goosie Girl's etsy shop.

I was happy to bring a platter worth sharing, and we were all delighted with our visit.

Thanks for the great weekend!

Born (near) the Fourth of July (July 2014)

One of our neighbors had a baby in late June.  As we were out-of-town and busy with 4th of July festivities, this was the first chance I had to create something to celebrate baby Matthew's arrival.  Can you guess what colors of icing I had leftover?

 The polka dot onesies were all made while wet, with the star embellishment added for fun.  (I sure have gotten mileage out of Wilton's Jumbo Star Sprinkles lately.)

 

The other two patterns were added after the wet flood icing had dried.

We are so happy to welcome another little baby in our neighborhood.

All the kids will be playing together before we know it!

Congratulations!

Surfin' USA (July 2014)

So, the 4th of July might be one of my all-time favorite days of the year.  It is truly a "family day," as my kids would say.  (Basically, the name for weekends and any "extra" days we get as a family all together.)  Between the parade in the morning and the neighborhood festival with rides, carnival food, and live music, who wouldn't want to stay up late?  And that...staying up until past 9:00...is the ultimate "special treat" for the kids.  Our new house happens to be located right next to a country club that puts on a pretty spectacular fireworks show.  Therefore, we basically have a personal, up-close view, all while sitting in pajamas on our back deck...it's amazing. 
(Not sure why that wasn't listed on the MLS website...what a perk!)

But enough about all the reasons we love the 4th at our house.  Let's talk cookies!  My daughter, was the inspiration for these, as she was singing The Beach Boys, "Surfin' USA" on our roadtrip back home, and voila, an idea was born.

 Red, white, and blue is my favorite color palette.  It looks good on everyone and is so classic.

For the beach cookie, I let the blue set overnight and then used some brush embroidery to paint some waves on top.  (I should have used a different brush in hindsight...ah, lesson learned.)  The brown sand I outlined and filled, but then when almost dry, I dabbed my finger around the semi-dry icing to give it some texture.  (I thought a long time about how to create texture here, and then, this simple trick came to mind.)  I used a toothpick to write USA, and then a red star was added before entirely dry.

The surfboards were all hand cut with cookie dough.  Very time-consuming, and not too uniform in shape.  In the future, I will spend more time recycling a cutter that I own or give up and purchase a surfboard cutter.

I looked online for awhile, gathering ideas for surfboard designs, finally deciding upon these.  I particularly like the blue and white wave design and the ones with the "flower."  Those flowers were made using a cool technique when the icing was still wet.  First, I flooded the background color, and then, while the icing was still wet, I drew a circle in a different color on top, dragging a toothpick through it to create a flower effect.

Oh, and then because I love a good theme, I added a few sharks.  They were inspired by Sweet Sugarbelle, but I made them a bit simpler.  We had come home from vacation June 30th, so let's remember, I didn't have much time here!

 

These pictures were taken on a platter, looking all festive and formal, but in reality, they were eaten during the fireworks, so who knows if anyone even saw these designs anyway (!)

Happy Fourth!

Hittin the Road (and the Beach) (June 2014)

Hooray for summer!  This year, we decided to stick with our traditional option of renting a house by a lake for a week.  With the kids being 4 and 2, there really is nothing better than being near a zero-entry lake and having access to lots and lots of sand.  We get messy, we visit with family, and we do, well, nothing.  This year, instead of heading north to Michigan, we were going earlier in the year, so we tried Kentucky Lake for the first time.  The weather was much warmer, and the kids had a blast.  Here are the cookies I took along for our week of vacationing (and snacking).

Let me first say, that I'm going crazy looking at the sand castle cookies.  I was inspired by Make Me Cake Me's design.  I knew I didn't have a lot of time to devote to these, so I was going to simplify the design a bit (as I was in the midst of packing for the trip and, let's remember, also transitioning between jobs).  I just wished I had created the same ridges on the top of the castles as I did on the bottom.  Driving you crazy too now, right? (or is it just me?).

Anyhow, these were pretty easy.  I used a tan color to outline and flood the cookie, and then I re-outlined so I could sprinkle on some coarse sugar.  I had originally tried graham cracker crumbs, but that turned out to be a mess.  In the future, SemiSweet Designs has a great tutorial on using graham crackers and even using them to look like moss.

 I made the pink triangle next, immediately covering it with little rainbow non-pareils.  (My daughter enjoyed helping with this part.)  Then I added a little white flagpole, and voila!

 

The beach ball also required 2-part outlining.  First, I used the white piping icing to outline my ball and the different sections.  I used yellow as the primary color, alternating sections, and then 3 other accent colors.  I then re-outlined in white to make the colors stand out a bit more.

We snacked on these goodies all week-long, and we gave a few to the staff at our resort.

Summer is the best, and this vacation couldn't have come at a better time...we all deserved to take a break!

Lemons and Limes (August 2013)

These were a delight to make.  Pretty quick and easy, but really happy with how they turned out, especially when all arranged on a platter.  I actually made these little guys twice this summer (thank you to Sweet Sugar Belle for her never-ending inspiration).  They required only a circle cookie cutter and a knife, and three basic colors, with which just a little darkening of the green and yellow colors revealed the perfect shade for the "rinds." 

I loved the idea of creating halves and quarters for the people who can't seem to commit to eating a whole cookie.
 (Hmm...that never seems to be my problem.)

And, these ended up being a perfect platter of cookies to bring to our first attendance at the neighborhood's block party.  We're still the new kids on the block, as we had just moved in about six months earlier, but it was a great way to meet the neighbors and inaugurate us into the group.

Perhaps I should have also made some Corona-shaped cookies to go with them?

Stars and Stripes (July 2013)

So, the cool thing about this new blogging idea is that each year I can look back at previous cookie creations in either admiration or embarrassment or both, I guess.  Well, this year I decided to try an idea inspired by a Sweet Sugar Belle design.  She used some fancy equipment, but I managed to create some ok knock-offs with my amateur tools.  

For the red and white striped cookies, she had used a KopyKake projector.  It's basically like an old-school overhead projector (like the ones we used to use in grade school) that allows a design to be illuminated on the undecorated cookie, helping to ensure that your font/straight/curvy lines get traced in icing exactly how they appear on the paper design.  A very helpful tool if this is your professional job.  However, since the base model retails at around $200-300, and since I really only splurge on ingredients, food color, and decorative accents, I was ok with my wobbly lines on the striped cookie.

 For the navy star cookies, she used a plastic stencil.  Now that, I would be ok "splurging" on...only trouble was that I didn't know where or how to find one on short notice, so, I improvised.  I used an exact-o knife and cardstock to create a little template, and then I used my Wilton color mist silver spray right over it.  Of course, the cardstock became wet pretty quick and could not be re-used, but it served its purpose.

 

And, just for fun, I had my daughter help me create "fireworks" just like last year, since we had such fun decorating together.  I put the red and blue icing on the wet white icing, and she used the toothpick to create the explosions. 

 

All together, we thought it was a pretty patriotic platter.

Summertime (2012)

The summer of 2012 was one of our best.  I was on maternity leave and definitely had my hands full with the two kids, but with my daughter getting a bit older, we were able to enjoy a few more of what the holidays had to offer.  We were all looking forward to going to the 4th of July parade together as a family, but to make things extra special for our big girl, now 2 1/2...we were planning on introducing her to fireworks.

She had never been allowed (encouraged) to stay up that late before, so we really tried to pump her up and make it special.  These cookies were made a few days ahead of time and inspired by the 4th and Martha Stewart.

She even made a few!  Amazing what creations you can make with wet icing and toothpicks.

We also went to many outdoor picnics and summer concerts with our friends.  We especially enjoyed going to Ravinia and seeing Ralph's World...you don't know him?!  You should.  In order to bring something to share to these special events, I played around with some summertime cookie cutters, thanks to my seasonal "Year of Cookies" Crate and Barrel cookie cutter set (thank you, wedding registry!).