Purple Owl Cookies

While in college, my roommate and I studied in Spain together.  We kept seeing little owls in many of the shops and someone told us that owls were used as good luck charms.  We couldn't resist buying a few because they were too darn cute.  Now owls are all the rage here!  Especially in the fall, I see them every where I go.  And I'm OK with that.

 

The roommate just had a birthday.  She likes owls.  She likes purple.  And she likes chocolate.  Put them all together and what do you get?  Chocolate owl cookies!

 

 

(The recipe for these cookies - and the decorating instructions - can be found in the book "Decorating Cookies" by Bridget Edwards.)

 

I packaged a few of these cookies into little bags.

And I put the bags in a giant owl mug!

These cookies are moister (is that a word?) than my usual sugar cookies, so they are harder to transport without breaking.  But they taste VERY chocolatey. Almost like a brownie.  I don't hear anyone complaining about having to eat broken pieces!

Halloween Mini Album

One of the main reasons I scrapbook is that I have a horrible memory.  If it's not in the scrapbook, it's like it didn't even happen.  So when the kids and I were discussing what their past Halloween costumes had been, I was having a very difficult time recalling what they wore!

 

I decided to make an 8x8 album to hold pictures of the kids in their Halloween costumes each year.

 

Here's the title page:

 

 

This is my favorite year - when Aaron (jaguar) was 3 and Spencer (Tigger) was one:

And here they are last Halloween as a Special Agent and a Ninja.

 

 

With two simple pages for each year, this is an album I can easily update as I get new pictures.  And this mini album will now become a part of my Halloween decorations!

It's here!

I learned how to bake and decorate cookies by reading other peoples' blogs.  The blog that was the most instrumental in my education is called Bake At 350.  The author of that blog, Bridget Edwards, just wrote a book called (appropriately) Decorating Cookies, and my copy of that book just arrived in the mail!

 

I couldn't be more excited!  In the book, she shares all her decorating tips about icing and sprinkles and sanding sugar and everything.  And there are tons of step-by-step decorating tutorials with full-color gorgeous photos. 

 

She also includes her recipe for Vanilla-Almond Sugar Cookies and her recipe for Royal Icing.  Those are Bridget's go-to recipes and they've become mine as well.  She has published the cookie recipe on her blog here and the icing recipe here.

 

But there are several new recipes in the book including this one:

 

I just made a double batch because, hello, NUTELLA.

I'll let you know how they turn out, but the dough tastes like a winner!!

 

My First Paying Customer

Someone actually paid me to make cookies!  She was throwing a baseball-themed rehearsal dinner and requested some cookies to match the theme.

Circles. Only two colors of icing.  I can do that!  Nice and easy.

The process still takes several days because of cooling and drying times.  Day one was baking, day two was outlining and flooding with white icing and day three was adding the red stitching detail.

I'm not very good at consistently drawing curves with icing, so I used the round cookie cutter as a template.  I traced a curve on to the dried white icing with a toothpick and then drew with the red icing on top of the toothpick mark.

 

It worked better if I let the red curved lines dry a little bit before adding the red stitches. Otherwise, the stitches kept sticking to (and moving) the red lines.

Cookies for Church Picnic

Our church's annual Labor Day picnic is this weekend and I signed up to bring some dessert. (Of course.)  I was thinking of various cookie designs - sunshine? picnic basket? - but I decided to try something I've never tried before.  I made the church logo with frosting!

These layered design cookies take several days to make due to drying time.  I baked the cookies one day, did the white frosting base another day, and finished up the logo part today.  I did the logo in three steps.  First I piped the "SBC" with a #7 tip in the blue frosting.  Then I piped the brown part of the compass with a #3 tip.  Finally, I added the blue compass points with a #3 tip.



 

It was fun to try something new.  And I think my church family will get a kick out of seeing them.

{Pinterest Success} Mockingjay T-shirt with Freezer Paper Stencil and Bleach Pen

I've seen quite a few cool Hunger Games t-shirt ideas popping up on Pinterest and I've been wanting to make one for a while.  One of the ideas involved using a freezer paper stencil and a bleach pen. That's the one I tried today.

Seriously, the hardest part of this project was finding freezer paper!  No luck at Walmart, Kmart or Target in my town.  Finally found some at my local grocery store and I bought a giant roll.  (I keep seeing cool projects involving freezer paper stencils so I figured I'd better buy a lot of it!)

I followed the directions found here on the Average Jane Crafter blog.  Her tutorial was perfect with great photos and easy-to-follow instructions.

I unearthed a too-small navy t-shirt from the bottom of the drawer and used it as my test subject.  Here's what it looked like with the stencil on it just before I bleached it.

I was afraid that, when I rinsed the shirt, I'd end up with bleach spots all over the place.  And I worried that, when I chucked the shirt in the wash, I'd inadvertently bleach stuff that I didn't want bleached.  But none of that happened.  It turned out cool!  I like the gritty imperfectness of the image.

 

Now I'll have to try again with a t-shirt that actually fits me....

Wizard101 Birthday Party

My son turned 7 this weekend and he wanted a Wizard101-themed birthday party.  Wizard101 is an online game that the whole family can play together.  We can even play with family members that live on the other side of the state!  Yay for technology.

Decorations
The main decoration was on the wall in the kitchen where most of the party stuff happens.  I strung some (Christmas) lights, made a banner, and hung some maps from the game on the wall.

I incorporated images of the birthday boy's game character onto the purple and yellow banner.  The maps are screen shots from the game, printed out and taped onto some black wrapping paper.  (Just hit your PrntScr key to generate screen shots. You can also download some wallpapers from the Wizard101 site here to use as decorations for your party.)

Anyone who has played Wizard101 knows you have to keep track of your health, mana and energy.  So they should recognize this:

I just pulled various-sized glass jars from the recycling bin and filled them with water and food coloring.  I typed the numbers in Word, printed them, and cut them out.  I used the numbers from his birth date and age to make this decoration.

The health, mana & energy globes were displayed on the mantel with an owl (dressed up like Gamma from the game) and a wizard hat.

My mother made the Bartleby tree by forming his face out of green & brown clay and sticking it on an old tree-shaped toy.  She also made signs of her characters standing in front of each of the schools in Ravenwood and set up the signs around the grandfather tree.  (And now you see where I get my crafting tendencies!)

Activities
You advance in Wizard101 by completing "quests" so I designed 4 quests for the kids to complete.

As the kids arrived, they were directed to the "crafting tables" where they could make a necklace with the school symbol of their choice and a wand.  For the necklaces, I printed multiple copies of the school symbols and punched them out with a 1" circle punch.  The kids glued the symbols into a bottle cap.  I helped them punch a hole in the bottle cap and attach a jump ring, then they threaded the bottle cap charm onto a ball-chain necklace. 

For the wands, my husband provided some sticks from the yard and the kids decorated them with all sorts of craft supplies. I gave them foam shapes, ribbons, feathers, sequins and jewels, pipe cleaners, colored tape, and anything else I could find in the craft closet.

Kids making wands at the party

After dinner, I announced that the cake and ice cream had been stolen! I involved the grandpas as the "bad guys". The kids divided into two teams. One team had to recover the ice cream by finding 5 "potion ingredients" (beads in small canisters) to make a potion to put the dragon (plastic toy) to sleep and get his key. The other team had to recover the cupcakes by finding 5 puzzle pieces, and assembling the puzzle to get the password. With the key and the password, they could enter the dungeon (kitchen) and have cake and ice cream.

Two teams working on their quests

The birthday boy requested chocolate cupcakes with purple frosting and yellow stars & moons like Merle Ambrose's hat.  I made little picks with the school symbols on them to stick in the cupcakes as well.

Food
My son is a big fan of chicken drumsticks.  We love to battle against the prince and barons in Colossus Boulevard because they use drumsticks as their wands.  That was the inspiration for the main course for dinner.  Then I was looking at some of the "pet snacks" I had collected and decided I could use those as party food, too!  Here are the labels I made for the food table.

The "fire crackers" were Doritos and the "crackers" were saltine crackers.  I cut carrots and cucumbers into sticks and named them "Moolinda Wu's Veggie Wands".

We offered Sprite and Root Beer to drink and I made some labels to wrap around the 2-liter bottles as well.

Favor Bags
The party favors were packaged in blue paper lunch sacks.  I printed labels for them with the Ravenwood crest and each child's name.  The prizes inside were a wizard rubber ducky, a bouncy ball, a glow stick, candy that looks like potion bottles, and Cracker Jacks (with a pet snack label).

It was so much fun to put this party together for my sweet 7-year-old.  And I think the kids enjoyed themselves, too!