Sweet cookies for a winter day

Cameos, hearts, and flowers to brighten a cold winter day!

Is it almost spring?

Calico Easter egg cookies

I am my own worst critic. 

It isn't too often that I am completely pleased with things I make.  

After I decorate my cookies I hide them away for a few hours and then go back and look at them, hoping that my opinion has changed for the better.  

With that being said, I think these cookies are the prettiest I have ever made.  

That was humble, wasn't it?

They may not be technically perfect, but I adore the colors and old fashioned feeling they have.

They remind me of vintage wallpaper or fabric.

And do you want to know the really crazy part?

I had absolutely no idea where I was going with these.  

I just mixed up some pretty colors and let loose.

I had originally thought I might paint on them with food coloring, but SOMETHING held me back from the paint brushes.

Thank you SOMETHING.

Inspiration is such a funny thing.  

You can't force it - or at least I can't.

It comes to me at unexpected times almost like it has a life of it's own.  

And I am very happy and grateful when it does  :)

I mailed these darlings off to my eldest son Drew, and his wife Genevieve. Drew is in med school and Genevieve is getting her masters/Phd in psychology.  They have been studying their brains out so I thought they could use a sweet treat.  

Drew's birthday is coming up, and I asked him what he wanted as a gift.  I did a double take when I read his email requesting a knot/suture tying practice kit - I had no idea they even made such a thing.  

Shhhhhhh, don't tell him I ordered it!

Linking with
Ladybird Lane
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Paris in spring cookie favor

Not too much to say about this cookie.

Just thoughts of spring,

the romance of Paris,

and LOVE to my readers!

Linking with
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Making the World Cuter
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Pansy cookies and The Philadelphia Flower Show

Cabin fever had me in it's grip, and there is no better cure than The Philadelphia Flower Show.  Just walking in there and smelling the flowers and trees in bloom was pure heaven.  The gardening inspiration wasn't too bad either!

Because pansies are right at the top of my favorite flower list - they are so SWEET and pure SPRING - I made pansy cookies for the day of the show.  

I totally want to do this - a mannequin in ivy and succulents!

Mr. Enchanted is going to make one of these for me!  

Until I get grandchildren, my dog Nellie will make good use of it  :)

Back to the cookies.  I had an empty oatmeal container laying around, and I thought it would make the perfect cookie transporter. I covered it in scrapbook paper, added a purple ribbon, put a little crinkled grass in the bottom, and filled it up with the cookies.

I cut rounds out of wax paper to keep the cookies separate.  

All I had to do was pop the lid on and it made for a cute and sturdy way to bring them on the road trip!  

A

I am soooooo ready to get going in my garden!

This year's show was themed England, so there were a lot of cottage gardens on display.

Between the flowers and the pansy cookies, it was a day filled with sweet spring!

Oh, and I wanted to show you how my forced forsythia blossoms are coming along.  Aren't they wonderful?

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Pastel cookie bouquet

Sometimes cookie projects go as planned, sometimes they turn out better than I anticipated, and sometimes, well, they just frustrate me.   

This one goes in the frustration category.  

I had an idea of how I wanted to do a cookie bouquet where the faces of the flowers sat on top of the stems.  I have done several other bouquets where it is simply a cookie on a stick pushed into floral foam and they face outward.

Like this.

Or this.

With a plan in my head, I decided what kind of cookie flowers I wanted to make.  I decided that double stacked cookies would make for a more interesting presentation.  

Note to self:  keep it simple when attempting a new technique.

Anyway, I began by cutting out my flower shapes in two sizes and making a hole in the centers using a skewer.

Bake and cool, you know the drill.

I decorated the cookies with icing, and let them sit overnight to dry.  The next day I assembled the cast of characters that would become the cookie bouquet.

The first thing I did was to hot glue floral foam into the bottom of a basket.  I pieced together two shapes because I was trying to use up what I had in my craft supplies.

I love The Dollar Tree.  

You want to be sure to hot glue it to the bottom of the basket so the whole thing doesn't topple out.  That would be tragic.  

Next I covered some small skewers with floral tape.

This isn't strictly necessary, but I was still in dream land about how great this would look.

I then pushed a green Dot candy on the skewer, followed by the large cookie, then the small cookie, and finally a yellow dot candy.  

Think shish- ka- bob.

Any hard gooey candy would suffice here - it is just to keep the cookies in place and hide the top of the skewer.  I also added some royal icing between layers in hopes of keeping things together.  

For an extra splash of snazzy, I put some royal icing around the bottom of the yellow Dot and then rolled it in nonpareils.  

This was my favorite part of the entire project.  

Time to push the skewers into the foam and make my 
bee -yoo- tee- ful  bouquet.

Problem was, I didn't have the proper amount of cookie flowers.

Ok, you can all stop laughing now.

No time to make more cookies or go to the store because this was to be a gift for my daughter's after school Spanish tutor, and I had about an hour before it had to go to the school.  

Gulp.

I made a mad dash for my garbage bag full of gift wrapping ribbons and opened up another box of Dots.  I jabbed un-floral taped skewers into the Dots, made a few dots of icing on top of the Dots, and tied gobs of green curling ribbon on.  

I was hoping they would look like flower buds.  

A girl can dream.

Still looked too empty, so I added more green ribbon and piled in paper Easter grass.  I only had about 1/4 of a bag of green, so I put a whole bag of yellow in and then top dressed it with green.  

Still too bare.

Back to the ribbon bag, and I grabbed a massive ribbon package topper that was a good color match.  

Smoke and mirrors folks.

On the positive side, it was bright and cheerful and I really liked the cookie flowers.

The nonpareils were the star of the show.

Oh, I almost forgot!  I had also made a little cookie message for the sweet girl who gives up her time to help my sweet girl.

Cookies are sweet and so are you!

I ever so carefully loaded it into the car and drove it to the high school for the

COOKIE BOUQUET DELIVERY!

This was a learning curve for me, and I hope know I can tackle another one with somewhat better great success!

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My Girlish Whims
Snap Creativity

Get well cookie bouquet

Poor Brooke was in the hospital last week, and I wanted to do something to cheer her up.  

That would be cookies, of course!

Unfortunately, it was pouring rain most of the week making the humidity level in the house very high.  You know, too warm to turn on the furnace and too cool to turn on the air?  It makes for cookies that are a bit soft - YIKES!

I assembled them with great care, and didn't do it till right before I gave them to her.  Even then, one fell off the stick. 

I am happy to report that she is out of the hospital and doing well.  

And it is almost furnace season, which is a cookie baker's best friend!

Sweet flower cupcakes and a very special link

I had to face my old nemesis THE CUPCAKE again.  A friend requested them, and gave me free reign on the design as long as it was not Christmas themed.

I put on my thinking cap, and this is what I came up with.

So I made a vanilla white chocolate cuppie topped with Swiss meringue buttercream.  I double loaded the bag with pink and soft blue and made hydrangea flowers.  Yum-o-la!

The second cupcake was a rich chocolate topped with pink cream cheese buttercream roses and further embellished with various royal icing flowers and leaves.

And it looked like a spring garden.  Aaaaah.

I had an all time record of icings in my kitchen on the same day - SMB, traditional royal (the kind that dries hard as a rock), cream cheese buttercream, and my cookie icing.  I do believe it was the worst mess I have ever made in my kitchen.  It was truly horrifying.

But worth it.

And although cupcakes are sweet, the following link is even better!

 I hope everyone reading this post will visit  Sweetology 101 where my blog buddy Trish is dedicating her tea party Tuesdays to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, to raise funds for this incredibly worthy cause.  Please visit Trish and hear about her visit to St. Jude's and learn more about the wonderful work being done there.  Every year for Christmas, I make a donation to what I feel is a worthwhile cause, 

and this year it is St. Jude's.

Will you consider making it yours?

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Pink Saturday

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Happy Hour Projects

Mrs. Fox's Sweets

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