Valentine Cookies

I decided to take on the cookie project again, after more than 3 years. Last time I baked, it was on my son’s first birthday. And I have this vague memory of baking,  rebaking, and decorating cookies for over a month. In the end, I had so many cookies as a result of multiple trials.

This time was little different. I felt more confident baking, and my little chef was there to help me. We were baking cookies to give out at his school for friends and teachers for Valentine’s Day. These cookies were accompanied by an airplane card which I guess would be another post after valentine’s.

 I followed the Land O'Lakes Butter Cookies recipe. Its simple, quick and tasty.

Here is our cookie dough ready and divided into 3 parts.

 First batch ready. Hot and crispy cookies.

Poof! First batch gone. Dad and son were only tasting the cookies. Well, there was nothing left to decorate for Valentine’s.

So, out came the next 2 lots of cookie dough and baked few more batches.

I bought this vintage valentine image from etsy. And got it printed on edible paper from a bakery close by. Pasted the edible paper using cornstarch liquid. 

I skipped the step of frosting the cookie with royal icing, and directly pasted the image to the cookie. Added a border using royal icing.

I am sure the image would have looked brighter if I had frosted the cookie, but really, are the kids ever going to notice it? And it saved me 5 hours of work and 2 days of drying time.

Couple of decorated cookies also vanished every time I had my back towards them. But thankfully, I had extra J

Happy Baking and a Very Happy Valentine’s Day!

High Tea Baby Shower Invitations

My darling sister is expecting a baby girl soon, and I am super excited to throw her a shower. She is one of those people who have tons of friends and all are equally excited for this shower. So, one of her friends suggested the theme of party as ‘Tea’, as my sis is really into ‘Tea’. She loves going to tea boutiques and trying out new flavors. I think her only pet peeve with her husband is that he is not very fond of tea. So she cannot enjoy her evening cup of tea with him. And she gets real envious if she calls me in the evening, and me and my husband are having our evening tea together, especially, when it’s my husband who has prepared it. She keeps reminding me how lucky I am that there is someone to make tea for me. So, it was more than appropriate to have a Tea Party for her and to welcome the beautiful little girlie on her way.

I designed this Vintage High Tea card for the invites. It had to be Pink. Got it printed from Staples on a cream cardstock paper(selected by my 4 year old). Anything selected by my son makes it even more special for my sister.

For the envelope, I ordered brown Kraft envelopes from etsy. I love them.  I needed to do something to the envelope, so added a liner with a vintage flower print. You can see the tutorial on how to add liner from cakeeventsblog.

And remember the pink doilies that me and my son colored a while back? Well, I decided to use some of those on the envelopes. I wish I had colored them lighter. I remember reading somewhere that it needed a lot of color, so I poured in half a bottle of my food color. Next time, going to use my judgment.

This is half doily on each envelope.

I wish I had a calligraphy pen to write on the envelope. Well, maybe next time.

Can’t wait to start on other project for this shower.
Here are rest of the details from the shower.

Hoping that this little girl(once she grows up) would provide her Mom with never ending company over a cup of tea, for all the evenings ahead.