Cookie Decorating Party

My niece and nephew are spending the day at Grandma's (Mom's) house today, so I'm heading over with some goodies to have some Christmas fun with the kids.

Yesterday I baked some gingerbread cookies, and today we're having a cookie decorating party. My favourite part of being an Aunt is filling the kids full of treats and then returning to comfort of my own home, free of the consequences. The kids always think I'm the best...not so sure how the parents/grandparents feel. Haha!

For decorating the cookies, I got Christmas sprinkles, candy cane pieces, gum drops, smarties, milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and rainbow sprinkles. Oh and three colours of frosting.

The cookies I'm taking over are Christmas trees and candy canes (made with homemade cookie cutters, of course!). I also picked up a few pre-made gingerbread men for us to decorate too. Can't wait!

New Festive Mug

I treated myself to a new mug to help me get into the festive spirit. I love snowmen because they are always smiling, and this guy helps me start my day with a festive smile.

Rainbow Birthday Cake #FoodPicFriday

Well it looks like it's been Rainbow week here on the blog, so I couldn't let today pass without another rainbow post. Good thing I had some photos handy of a rainbow cake I made in November for my birthday. This is a simplified rainbow cake, using only one cake mix, four layers, and one batch of Marshmallow Buttercream. For the decoration I used a 1A Wilton tip to make the top and bottom border. The "Happy Birthday" is a plastic cake topper that was originally on a Dairy Queen cake.

Rainbow Themed Party

This week I've been focused on the fun rainbow themed party my friends threw for their daughter last weekend. As you know I got to make the cake and the cupcakes, but there were lots of other fun snacks and treats that fit the rainbow theme.

Rainbow Fruit Tray

Rainbow Veggie Tray

Assorted Rainbow Treats

Rainbow Cupcakes on display

The works!

Decorations

Rainbow Stuffed Animals!

Not pictured: the hosts also fed us a meal of tri-colour (rainbow) pasta with fresh grated cheeses and flavoured olive oils and a rainbow salad that had purple cabbage, green spinach, and yellow corn. Very nice!

Homemade Cookie Cutter

I needed a number "3" cookie cutter for the rainbow cake I decorated from yesterday's post. As my entire collection of cookie cutters (as posted about here) is new (and does not contain any numbers), I decided to make my own cookie cutter using aluminum foil as I've done here and here.

I originally learned how to make the cookie cutters from this blog tutorial.

Meterials Used:
• Aluminum foil
• Printed design for cookie cutter (could also be drawn)
• Measuring tape

I needed a "3" so I printed a nice looking one that was the size I wanted.  This "3" was 4" tall and 2.75" wide.

I measured the length of the design (using a sewing tape measure) so I would know how much aluminum foil I would need. The "3" I chose measured about 17.5" long.

I took out a piece of aluminum foil that measured 35"; twice as long as my design, as the first thing you do is fold the aluminum foil in half length wise.

35 inches long

Folded in half lengthwise - now 17.5 inches long

Next, it is folded in half height-wise about 5 times, until it is about 1/2" thick.

Next, trace your long strip of folded tin foil around your cookie cutter design.

Where the ends meet up, join them together. I used a small amount of glue to fasten them.

And there you have it! You're very own homemade cookie cutter!

The finished cookie cutter was a little bigger than my printout, but that actually suited me just fine. The finished measurement was 4.75" tall by 2.75" wide.

I love making the homemade cookie cutters, because they allow me to get a very specific, large sized cookie cutter, for just the cost of aluminum foil (this one has about eleven cents worth of foil in it). They are also recyclable if there is no need to use it again. All around, pretty great. And this one helped me decorate an awesome cake!