I am hardly ever prepared.

I am hardly ever prepared with a post that is related to the holiday being celebrated.  That is what makes today so special, because lo and behold here is a post that relates to St. Patricks Day!   

Over the weekend I had a strong urge to bake.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to make, but I knew it had to be some that I could decorate.  You see I had this gel frosting pen left over from Christmas.  I had originally bought a green and a red one.  Well, Katie ended up get a hold of the red one and a few teeth marks later left it unusable.  So, I have had this lonely green gel pen in my pantry with no purpose for a few months. 

I landed on frosted sugar cookies.  I started with one of the cheater bags where you dump the dry ingredients from a package and add one egg and some butter.

I did make the recipie that allowed for making cut out shapes.  It was a tough choice looking at my shapes.  I have a flamingo, longhorns head, and hearts.  Nothing very in spirit with the holiday, so I ended up just using a glass to cut these out. 

They smelled so good coming out of the oven!

Then I had to wait for them to cool!  I still adore these stacking cooling racks!

Then the fun really began.  I gave all the cookies a coat of white/vanilla frosting with a butter knife and then went to work doodling on the cookies with the gel pen.

I made shamrocks:

 And it was pretty easy to write words:

This started off as "luck" but it turned out a bit gooey in the beginning there.

Which lead to making phrases like this one:

And what do you suppose this one means?

Go ahead... take a guess or two!

Yup.  That's a mug of beer.

Put the phase together and you get Green Beer!!

Yes, I'm a dork

Yes, I was having way too much fun with this. 

Yes, Mr. Happy got a nice laugh from this one!

Ok.

Now, try this one.

Any guesses?

I was thinking Spring when I was making this!  Get it?  Spring?


I can see getting more of those gel frosting pens in the future.  They were really fun, made a big impact.  And most importantly made me really happy!!  Oh, and don't you think they would make a cupcake look fantastic?

The pens also said that you could use them to decorate the cookie before cooking which would leave a nice shiny baked in version of the decoration.  I may have to give that a try in the future!

No matter how you decide to celebrate, I want to wish you a Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Fall festivus

Lately, I have been a huge sucker for textures in my pictures. 

Hee hee... that rhymes... textures in my pictures!

Where were we?  Texture, right?  Just take a peak at the fantastical little bubbles on this leaf decoration.  So tiny and delicate.  So many all lined up looking reflective and orderly. 

Until yesterday I wasn't really sure what the bubbles represented. 

Were they something imaginative or were they inspired by something real in the world? 

Well, yesterday I unexpectedly got my answer.  I believe the bubbles are meant to look like frost on the leaves.  Yes, we had frost yesterday morning.  It covered everything.

Twigs

moss

grass

rocks

and... leaves!

When you see frost, in the sunlight, on a leaf... it looks like a million tiny orderly bubbles.  Just like the pictures.  And speaking of pictures.  I took some.  Of the actual frost.  I have to download them and load 'em up here so we can do a comparison.  I think you will see what I mean. 

And even if you don't.  Well you can still enjoy the texture today.  And think about coming back tomorrow to see the frost pictures. 

Hope you decided to come on back! 

Hope you are having a bubble tickling Monday!

4th of July Decorations

Creating decorations for the 4th of July = happiness!

I got this idea from a Simply Living email (I think). It's just brown wrapping paper tied down with string and then I used stamps, markers, stickers, and decorative punches to create a festive table setting! The blue napkins with stars were from Target and I used a pinch of red ribbon to tie them around silverware. For extra party spirit I served homemade Sangria from Applewood's Blackberry wine (seen pictured on the table corner). Delicious!

The overall effect was a hit! Very festive and fun. Bonus... it was so easy to clean up the card table! Just cut off the strings and fold up the paper and voila... table is all cleaned up.