Sugar Cookies

Okay, I'm not very good at this craft blogging thing. I don't have a whole lot of time to make crafts, so I don't post very often. And even when I do craft, I often don't think to post. Sorry!

I'm going to try to get better. And probably expand the blog a bit to include things like reading and writing and such. I'm a huge English nerd; I love to write, and I love reading. Right now I'm really into the classics (let's face it, most authors nowadays just don't put as much time into writing as they used to. Now it's all about meeting deadlines.). Hopefully most of you will still want to read my blog even when it's a post about books instead of crafting. If not, well, you don't have to read. But hopefully it will get me to post more!

Last summer for Fourth of July I made some super cute star-shaped sugar cookies. Well, the frosting recipe I used from Our Best Bites wasn't my favorite in taste, but it did make the cookies very pretty. I brought some of the cookies over to my family, and my dad LOVED them. So, I made him some of his very own for his birthday a few weeks ago!

My dad drag races, so I thought it would be cute to give him race car cookies! I love how the flame designs turned out.

I had planned to blog today about some donut muffins I made today (got the idea here), but when I uploaded the pictures, my computer freaked out, so I don't have any pictures! :( They were pretty good, but I'm thinking I'll tweak the recipe a bit the next time I try them. They were more dense than I was hoping for.

With resolutions to blog more often, hopefully you'll all be hearing from me again soon!

Nativity Wreath

For my mom's birthday a while ago, I made this adorable nativity wreath:

I love how it turned out! Look at their adorable little faces! 

I'm not very artistic when it comes to painting, so I was so happy with how adorable it turned out! 

Homemade Hot Pockets

I made homemade hot pockets today, and they were definitely a success. My husband said he likes them better than store-bought hot pockets, and that these were the best food experiment I've ever made. High praise, considering how he downs all of my food!

They were really simple to make. I used biscuits from a can (though if you're going all out you could make the biscuit dough from scratch). Each hot pocket is two biscuits flattened out. I flattened out the first one, added some meat (here it was Turkey), some veggies (zucchini and tomatoes - I recommend adding tomatoes no matter what else you add, and precooking any other veggies so they aren't too crunchy), and some cheese. I added a bit of salt and pepper, then topped with the second flattened biscuit. I used a fork to secure the edges so nothing would seep out, then did a simple egg wash on top before sprinkling on some basil and garlic salt. I will probably also add some coarse salt the next time I make these. 

Halloween Brownies

For Halloween, I made some fun little pumpkin brownies I thought I'd share with you all. They're just box brownies that I cut out with a cookie cutter, but I thought they turned out pretty cute.

Those little chocolate balls at the bottom are Brigadeiros. They are really easy to make, but super yummy. I don't have time to share much else, but I thought I'd post a fun Halloween treat :)

SILHOUETTE MACHINE GIVEAWAY!!!!

SILHOUETTE MACHINE GIVEAWAY!!!!

My sister blogged about this, and I want it too! So many fun ideas already percolating in my mind...

Chocolate Grasshopper Cake

One of my all time favorite flavor combinations is chocolate and mint. Thin mints, mint chocolate chip ice cream, peppermint bark, the list goes on and on. So when I saw this recipe on Betty Crocker, I knew I could make it better. And boy, did I!

Here's where I have to brag a little - I took the cupcake version of these to a bake sale for a church event, and they were a huge hit! I brought two plates (each plate only had 5 cupcakes, they were small plates), and they sold for a combined $45! One of the plates sold for $25, which was the second highest of any of the items sold. For five of these babies.

You start by making your basic chocolate cake, but add in a little peppermint extract. The recipe said to use store-bought hot fudge, but ganache is better, so I used that. Once the cake has cooled, spread a layer of ganache on top, then take some cool whip, dye it green, add a little mint extract to that, and spread on top of the ganache. I added some chopped up grasshopper cookies for decoration on top.

After trying it this way, I noticed that the ganache I used wasn't quite thick enough, so the cool whip kept sliding off the top once you cut it into pieces. Rather than make thicker ganache (way too easy!), I decided to make them into cupcakes!

Regrettably, I failed to take pictures. I may just have to make these again sometime soon and capture the pure delight of the cupcake version for you. 

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 box chocolate cake mix

Ingredients as called for on box

2 tsp mint extract 

Chocolate ganache

1 (8 oz) container Cool Whip

1 pkg grasshopper cookies

Green food coloring

Combine ingredients for chocolate cake, as called for on box. Add 1 1/2 tsp mint extract to the batter, then bake as directed on box, in 9x13 pan. 

Let cake cool completely, then frost with a layer of chocolate ganache. Allow to thicken in fridge for 15-20 minutes. While setting up, combine cool whip with remaining 1/2 tsp mint extract. Add green food coloring to desired green-ness. Spread a layer of mint cool whip over the ganache. Crush the grasshopper cookies, and sprinkle over cake. 

A fun twist:

Make cake batter as above, but bake into cupcakes. Inject the ganache into the middle of the cupcake, then frost with cool whip and top with cookies. 

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did! 

Holiday Wreaths

This past summer, my hubby and I celebrated our first anniversary. We have a little inside joke (based on the Disney movie Cars - no, we don't have any kids yet, we just like Disney movies, okay?), anytime we get snuggly together on the couch, we say we're "getting cozy at the cone." So, for our anniversary, I made him a little wooden sign:

I got a little wooden "welcome" sign at the dollar store, then just painted over it! This would have been a lot easier if I wasn't too poor to afford stencils. I had to print off "The Cone," then cut it out using an exacto knife, then try and use that as a stencil. Not so easy. And it didn't really work out that well, which is why it's outlined in a darker blue. The edges were kind of wonky, so I touched them up by outlining. Turned out fairly decent, considering the lack of stencils! 

I've also been really into wreaths lately. I made one for Christmas last year, and liked how it turned out so much that I made another for 4th of July. 

For this one I got one of those twine wreath bases, a bunch of dollar store flowers, and basically just stuck them in until it looked pretty. I added a bow at the bottom for a nice touch. If you don't like your wreaths this simple, you could add little stars or something. I'm happy with just the flowers though! 

I'm quite proud of the bow. 

By the way, I used a very advanced method for attaching the flowers to the base: hot glue! 

Same concept here, but with a Christmas tree wreath. Also used hot glue. 

You could make a wreath for just about any holiday, with whatever color flowers and ribbon match the decor for that season. I think I'll try my hands at an Autumn wreath in a few months.