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

My Second Cookie Attempt

My second stab at decorated cookies came after we tried a new vet as a last ditch effort to save our sweet 14 year old cat, who by the way, is now thriving after a thyroidectomy. As a thank you to our new vet I made her some kitty cookies.  I even went so far as to make my own cookie cutter for this - not sure where that bit of over-achievement came from, but I was pleased with the result nonetheless.  I'd been thoroughly studying every single post on The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle and recalled having seen a post on making your own cookie cutters, which at first I'd thought was nuts.  Then one night I had a light bulb moment when digging through my craft filing cabinet. I ran across a little scrapbooking kitty "license plate" and loved the shape of it and at that moment recalled the how-to on Sugarbelle's blog and decided to give it a try. 

I give you a pic of the inspiration and of the finished product. I think it turned out pretty well considering I hadn't the first clue what I was doing. Looked pretty good, but how well it would work remained to be seen.

I was nervous about how the cookies themselves would come out from my makeshift cookie cutter and was once again pleased with the result.  I was essentially a Sugarbelle Stalker for this entire project, as I used her basic sugar cookie recipe, too, for these.  Here's how they cut out and baked up. Once again, not too shabby! 

So I'd completed the easy part and now I was ready to do the really scary part.  This time I elected to use Royal Icing rather than the glaze I'd used on the goats.  So this project had yet another first in it.  What did I learn?  Consistency is key! Faces are hard for me. I stink with a piping bag. A few of them turned out pretty cute, but it took me quite a while to get into my groove and feel comfortable doing them.  You can see in some of the pics below that I didn't have the consistency just right on a couple of the noses, so they spread out.  I did manage to have a few that I wasn't too embarrassed to give to the vet as a gift.  I showed the pics to my sister who insisted that I post the pics to facebook despite how bad I thought they looked, because she said I was being too critical.  Granted all of the commenters on the pic on facebook are friends of mine who would never be ugly to me, but their comments were positive and really helped with my confidence in them overall.