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).

Gingerbread Houses and Tips

Here are a couple pics of the gingerbread houses my sister Melanie and I decorated this year. We enjoy decorating gingerbread houses but the construction part.....hmm, not so much. So, what we do is buy a couple kits. However, I'm not about to spend ten bucks on something you can't even EAT so what we do is buy Target's Halloween gingerbread house kit on clearance after Halloween (this year we scored two for a dollar each once things were marked 90% off).



Making your own "glue" aka Royal Icing is easy if you have meringue powder. It's an initial investment of $6-$7 but it will last you a very long time as you don't use much to make a whole batch of icing (and you don't have to fiddle with egg whites). Royal icing is just egg whites, confectioner's sugar, water, and (optional) vanilla. I like to make my own because then you can control how thick it is.

My other tip isn't related directly to the houses. See the green polka-dot tablecloth? It's actually wrapping paper. If you have a square or rectangular table, wrapping paper over a plastic tablecloth (just in case of spills, we kept the same plastic one all season long) is a great way to decorate the table. We used it when we had people over to decorate cookies and it was great because the kids could make a mess and it was easy to clean up at the end of the party. It's cheap, too, if you buy your paper on sale after Christmas or at the dollar store.

Strange Vintage Tree

Do you like our strange vintage tree decoration? We found this at the Goodwill and spiffed it up a little (well, Melanie did). The elves are original and all of the sparkly, glittery items are new. The cats like to chew on parts of it and then pretend that they're not doing anything wrong (see pic above of Mr. Boots trying to look innocent).

No Fireplace? No Problem!

Do you like our new "fireplace"? Okay, so it doesn't give out much warmth (or any) but I wanted to have a mantel where we can hang our stockings When it isn't The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, this is three bookcases placed side by side. The bricks are two pieces of decorated foamboard (I used Sharpie to draw the brick pattern). I didn't have black posterboard so painted a piece of cardboard and cut out the flame shape with an exacto knife. It is backed with a piece of translucent paper ( vellum that was painted orange and red, in this case, but tissue paper could work). The red and yellow flames and the logs on the front were cut out of cardstock and taped on. The finishing touch is the light of the "fire" shining through - a string of battery-operated lights place on the empty shelf behind the cut out.

A good use for garland

I bought this garland at a huge discount after Christmas last year, not remembering at the time that I never know what to do with it since I don't like it on the tree. Anyway, I needed something to decorate the stairwell (it is drab and can be seen from the dining room), already had the star hanging on the wall, add some garland and bows and voila! To my surprise, the cats haven't messed with the bows. I thought those suckers would be irresistable!