Birthday Cookies, Salad, and Tulips

Today is the first day of spring and my mom's birthday (Happy B-day, Mom!) - a perfect occasion to use my new butterfly cookie cutters. Unfortunately, these pictures aren't great but I put some of the cookies on sticks and stuck them in the cake and others were stuck around the sides.

The cookies are pretty much a chocolate shortbread and aren't too sweet. They hold the cut out shape really well. I pressed the stick into the top of the cookie and reinforced the area with a little scrap of extra dough. Baking didn't take too long. I used the recipe from here: www.bakeitpretty.com/blog/?=owl+cookie


And the icing recipe is from here: www.kneadtobeloaved/2010/02/10/valentines-day-sugar-cookies . Definitely wait until the cookies cool before frosting. These butterflies had a real tendency to break down the middle :(
Below is a the awesome salad we had. Isn't it pretty? I was very excited to make the radish mushrooms along the edges. They're super cool and easy to do. I'll try to include a tutorial soon but there are a bunch elsewhere on the web.

And finally, look at these beautiful tulips! They coordinate well with the radishes, eh? I was looking for a way to display them and thought putting the vase in this gift bag looked nice (especially since my mom would be taking the flowers home at the end of the party).