Roll Tide Birthday Cookies

Our sweet little nephew celebrated his 4th birthday on December 28th, but his party wasn't until mid to late January, since his actual birth date makes getting to his party difficult. His mom changed her mind a number of times as to what the theme would be. She finally settled on a Roll Tide theme. I did jerseys, footballs and Big Als.

Roll Tide Birthday, Roll Tide Cookies

Roll Tide and DZ Cookies

Haven't posted in a while, so I am going to do several back-to-back posts to catch up. Here are some Roll Tide Cookies and Big Al Cookies I did for the opening game this year. I also did some of the Big Al ones for my niece's birthday and some for a friend's mom. I did another set for a friend's niece who just pledged Delta Zeta in her first year at UA.

Big Al Cookies

Alabama Cookies

Big Al Cookies

Delta Zeta Cookies, University of Alabama Cookies

War Eagle, Roll Tide and Happy Birthday Cookies

Living in Alabama, there is no escaping college football. This year was a particularly exciting Iron Bowl and I did cookies for a couple of Iron Bowl parties friends were having.

War Eagle cookies, Roll Tide cookies, Tiger Paw cookies

Auburn University cookies, University of Alabama Cookies, Paw Print Cookies

I also decided to try out the quick dry method for royal icing. My life may have been forever changed! Ha! I put the cookies in front of a fan on high for 30 minutes and then in the oven at 170 degrees (warm) for 30 minutes and they were dry enough to arrange/stack on a tray. I don't think I would do it all of the time, but for a last minute miracle, which I often need, since I wait to the last possible second to do these, well, pretty much anything else, too, it is a life saver.

Then my brother's birthday was later the same week and since Auburn pulled off the seemingly impossible and beat Alabama, and my brother is a huge Auburn fan, I did his birthday cookies in Auburn colors. Once again, I found myself waiting until the last minute to do them, so I used glaze on these, so that's why they are so shiny.

Happy Birthday cookies, Cupcake Cookies, Birthday Candle Cookies

I also did some Mr. Hankey and family cookies for him, but I won't show those here!

Where Oh Where Have I Been?

After doing all of those nurse themed cookies (over 350) in July, I think I became a little burned out on doing cookies.  Thankfully that seems to have passed now.  Here are a few things I've been up to since the last post here at the first of August.

These really got me back into the swing of things.  I LOVE fall and the colors and the drop in temperatures, although it hasn't yet been a dramatic drop here (in fact, I am still getting tomatoes from my tomato plants - granted not as many as mid summer, but they are still producing and that makes me very happy since I love tomatoes so very much.  But I digress.).  Wasn't sure for whom I was doing these, I just knew that I wanted to do them.  I even took them a step further and used a pumpkin spice roll-out cookie recipe for them and they were DIVINE, not to mention beautiful, if I do say so myself.  I found this recipe for the cookies themselves and made a couple of little adjustments to it.  I increased the pumpkin spice to 3 teaspoons, ya know ya gotta have it spicy!  And I found that I needed 3.25 cups of flour for this recipe to get the dough to the correct consistency.  Oh yea, I didn't use the milk it called for at all because I thought that was weird, but just in case it was for moisture, I just put in a tablespoon of vanilla, since I was planning to bake them immediately.  Here are the results:

Fall Cookies - Autumn Cookies

Fall leaves cookies, pumpkin cookies, acorn cookies

I also did some for my friend's mom who was going to the season opener on a bus to Atlanta for the Alabama game.  These are so very fragile.  My friend made these cute toppers to go on them.

Alabama Cookies

Roll Tide Cookies

My niece asked me if  I would help her with doing some for the Austin Gentry Memorial Scholarship fundraiser.  Her boyfriend's cousin was killed in a car wreck a couple of years ago and his family does an annual basketball tournament to raise funds for the scholarship fund they have set up in his name.  We did 150 basketballs and created bag toppers in his school colors with a logo design very similar to the t-shirts they had for 2013.  

Basketball cookies for Austin Gentry Memorial Scholarship

Then I just did these a couple of days ago for my friend's little girl's 3rd birthday party, which is today.  The theme was Princesses and Pirates.  I used Sofia the First as my inspiration for the coloring.  Sugarbelle gets all of the credit for the pirates. All week I kept wanting to go buy a balloon cutter for these, as well as a different tiara. In the end, I opted not to and simply used a 2.5" circle cutter and part of the negative space to create the bandana tie portion of the cookies.  I was really thinking I would like a more elaborate tiara cutter, but in the end, these worked just fine.  Also note, for some reason, the dark purple photographed very blue, but I assure you it was royal purple on the pirate bandanas.

Princess cookies, Pirate Cookies

Wow, I feel like a total slacker after putting down what little I have worked on for the last 2.5 months, but like I said, I'd hit a bit of a burn out point.  However, I am now looking forward to having lots of fun with some Halloween goodies!

Tying One on for Father's Day (and Playing Around with Leftovers)

Just played around with a necktie cutter that was given to me as a gift and did about 18 ties for friends to give as Father's Day gifts.

 

And here are some that I did just playing around with leftover cookies and icing from when I had done the birthday butterflies.  Trying to learn to do a houndstooth design, because that will be huge around here come football season.  I really love how the kitty one turned out.  

Speaking of kitties, not sure if I shared my take on the kitty I found a home for who had been hanging around our house for a couple of months, that I gave to his new family, among other kitty cookies.  He was such a sweet kitty that I just knew he'd be perfect for someone.  Found out this week that he ran away from his new home only a week after being there.  His new home is an hour and a half away from me, so I don't think he'll ever find his way back to our house, although it would totally earn him a spot as an inside kitty if he did.

Hope you are safe Mr. Kitty