Sugar cookies part 2; decoration

supplies

As promised, here is part two of the sugar cookie making! The decoration! Now, I made the frosting. It was pretty sticky and messy, but Reilly got to mix up the colors. We  made 5 different colors; green, yellow, red, purple and "brown" (which, to be honest, was more of a greenish-black color). Recipe follows. All you do is mix it up. I didn't even chill anything in the fridge, and once on the cookie, the frosting hardened up pretty good, which is what I was going for.

• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 1 tbs light corn syrup
• 2 tbs water
• 10 drops food coloring

The idea was to give Reilly and her friends something to do while they were here to keep out of the grownups hair. It worked! They seemed to have a total blast decorating the cookies, which made me happy.  Pretty easy little project for them to do I thought! They each got to take what they made home. I highly recommend putting something down under the cookies to prevent frosting spills...I put tin foil down, and I still have frosting to clean off the table.  I'm glad the kids enjoyed making the cookies! It was something artsy fartsy that I don't really do very often, but they seriously enjoyed it. 

 

 

 

finished cookies!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving with their families! I completely enjoyed my time with my family and friends this Thanksgiving. Stay tuned for a Thanksgiving day post, even though it'll be late. 

Sugar Cookies! Part 1

So today, while thinking of all the things that we have to do tomorrow, I was put in the mood to make something for the kids to do tomorrow while they were waiting for dinner to be done, and to keep them occupied and out of our hair. Since I don't have much in the way of "artsy fartsy" craft supplies, I decided, the next best thing?

Why, decorating cookies of course!

 So Reilly and I (but mostly Reilly) decided to make some cookies to decorate tomorrow! We found a recipe on allrecipes.com and worked on it this morning. First, I laid out all the ingredients:

mixing the dry ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup butter

 Mix together flour and salt in a bowl. Easy right?


We softened our butter in the microwave for 45 seconds. Then in a medium bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients (sugar, egg, vanilla, butter and sugar). The recipe says to use an actual mixer, but I just used a whisk.  It was just as easy.

wet ingredients

mixing them together

After whisking the wet ingredients together, add them to the dry ingredients and mix until they form a smooth dough. We just used our hands! After mixing it together really well, you need to wrap it up in saran wrap and chill for 1 hour in the fridge.

form the dough

dough out of the fridge

cutting the cookies

After an hour, take your dough out of the fridge. This is when you should pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees and get out your cookie sheets. I recommend using either a silicone baking mat or parchment paper....if not then just use an ungreased cooking sheet. Roll out your dough to the thickness you like. I try to keep my cookies a little on the thicker side to avoid tears and holes in the cookies. But whatever floats your boat. THEN! Bust out your trusty cookie cutters. We decided to use Christmas cookie cutters...mostly because those are the only kind we have. Plus, Thanksgiving is the gateway holiday to Christmas! Also, take time to get pictures of your child, or yourself posing. Bake at 325 for 13-15 minutes. I did 14 and they came out just right. Let them cool and then move to a sealable container if you aren't going to decorate them right away. Other wise, decorate them as you like!

my mini chef

The follow up post will be tomorrow after the kids decorate them. I figure this is an excellent way to keep them busy and out of trouble while the adults mingle, drink beer, and cook! I'm very excited for tomorrow!

Stay tuned for the follow up post on decorating and my ever-famous, Thanksgiving post!


I hope everyone has an AMAZING turkey day! Take the time to be thankful for your friends and family.

baby showers and beef bourguignon

Yawn. It has been a long week. Though -- since I stay at home, my weeks sometimes blend together, and really the only reason I know its the weekend is because Bradley is at home all day instead of at work. But its been an especially tiring week this week. Anyone else feel the same? Anyone? Good.

So today, I'm 17w3d into the 40-ish weeks of pregnancy. Man this one seems like its going slow....slow ass slow as a matter of fact. But, we did get something accomplished this week that it seems like I have been just completely putting off and putting off and that was complete a gift registry. Well...I guess the registry isn't really done...but those kinds of thing never are "complete" per se. But I got some stuff on a couple baby registries, which makes me feel much, much better. Especially with the big things, like a stroller and car seat and things like that....since I'm huge on everything being gender specific. But we picked out some things that would be perfect for both a girl or a boy, and I'm pretty happy with that. I think Bradley is as well, which is really awesome. So we got that done today. I am honestly excited about that part being as done as I'm gonna get it right now because I felt like it was this HUGE weight on my shoulders that's totally been lifted. Next up is the ultrasound that's coming up in two weeks that I can't wait for! It's such a big deal to me to find out the sex of the baby...oh and also to make sure he or she is growing just fine. Ha. Then after that will be the baby shower that we gotta deal with, which hopefully plays out smoothly. Those kinds of things frustrate the shit outta me...even when I'm not planning them. Brooklyn gave me the task of completing a guest list, which, after a week or whatever of not being able to get it, I finally picked some people for that...which was really hard. I'm a hermit. I like my very close group of a couple friends and that's it. It's not that I don't like other people, its just that I like these people to be around. Sigh. So that's comin' up too. Plus, I have a whole side of the family that lives in the mid-west that won't even be able to be at the shower, which makes me sad as well. But I guess 'tis the life. I'm pretty bummed in general about not being around my in laws during the pregnancy of their first biological grandchild. I know they are super excited, and would love to be closer...sucky. The second picture btw, I look sad because my arms are fat. I'll be working on that soon.

What else?

OH! So we watched Julie & Julia tonight -- well most of it. This is something I would totally, absolutely, love to do, is cook through an entire cook book and blog about it. But I won't. Haha. At least I can admit that though right? But it was a good movie, and I recommend it. The ending could have totally been better...but the story in and of itself was good. Maybe one day...maybe one day I'll cook through an entire cookbook.

Alright -- off to finish watching Celebrity Apprentice with the hubs. More blogs and stuff later.


<3