Bittersweet

Tonight Joe and I officially said our "goodbyes" to our loving, Harrison. I found a loving family online that had 2 dogs and 3 little girls to just love him to death. He will never be alone now and he will have plenty of love that Joe and I weren't able to give him. It was absolutely heartbreaking to drive away, but we managed to do it and I think in the end we made the right choice. This was so much better than taking him to a shelter. Now he has a chance with another family that even invited us to visit whenever we wanted. Sometimes loving someone (or somedog) means being selfless and giving them what they need, even if it breaks your heart.

Big Bang Theory Cookies

I got a request from a high school friend about making some Big Bang cookies for her husband's birthday! She wanted some to go along with the card she got him and I hate to admit this but I don't watch the show... so I did some homework online and came up with these!

Goodbye, Harrison

I say this with a heavy heart and an even heavier conscience, but Joe and I have decided that Harrison needs to go back to the shelter. We have toyed with the idea for a couple of weeks now and it's finally time. He is so wonderful when we're home. Obedient, loving, and so sweet.. but we just cannot handle is separation anxiety any longer. In the grand scheme of things he is by far not the worse case scenario of dogs with this anxiety but for our small apartment, it is too much. We actually videotaped him on Saturday when we went to lunch and did some shopping. What we saw made us finally decide to do what is best for him. He spend 2 1/2 hours roaming, whining, pawing and biting at the door, and ripping the rubber off the bottom of the door. With me starting work soon, he would be left alone much more than he is now and we DID try several things before deciding to call it quits. Puzzle toys, bones, long walks before we leave, trying to get him to be alone when we're home, leaving the tv on, Thundershirt, and I called the help hotline a couple of times. After we were referred to a specialist that cost $300-500 for a visit, we realized that was not an option. He deserves better and obviously needs something we are not giving him. We think he would be much better off with a yard to distract him during the day and with a family that was home almost all of the time. We love him and we will miss him but in the end we need to do what is best for him and for us. Tomorrow is going to be hard, but we will all get through it and in the end it's what needs to be done. I'm sure I'll cry .... I already have several times!

Monster Cookie Bars

If you have a ridiculous sweet tooth... you need to make these ASAP.... and don't you DARE calculate the calories ( I did that once and was absolutely horrified, yet it didn't stop me from scarfing them down). These are so horrible for you, but soooo horribly good.

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 stick butter
2 tsp baking soda
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
4 1/2 cups quick cooking oats
1 bag M&Ms
1 bag chocolate chips

Mix together softened butter and sugars. Blend in eggs and baking soda. Add in peanut butter until mixture is creamy. Next add your oats a cup at a time and mix by hand (and that doesn't literally mean your hand is what mixes it... use a spatula. Yes, I did that... and Lauren can attest. Not my finest moment.) Finally add in your bags M&Ms and chocolate chips and stir.

Thoroughly spray a 9 x 13 pan with non-stick cooking spray and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Do not cut into them until they are completely cooled... you will have a gooey mess on your hands. Don't overbake!

ENJOY!!!!!

1920s Themed Cookies

Joe's aunt contacted me about a month ago asking for a special request. Her friend was having a 1920s themed birthday party and she was hoping I could come up with some cookies for her party. I got my biggest order yet of ONE HUNDRED cookies! Now... I seriously planned this out day to day and made sure that I gave myself enough time and I budgeted my time well. Not once did I stress over these cookies (and that is really saying something). I'm pretty happy with the end result! My personal favorite cookies are the ones with the feather headband. :) I can't wait to get a kopykake projector so I can start doing fun words and very detailed designs!

Surprise!

"Joe has been full of surprises the past week. One day I got the mail only to find a package with a Batman apron in it that he ordered for me! I get four all over myself and in practically every crack and crevice of our kitchen (if you pulled out the oven you could back an entire batch of cookies with all the flour that has fallen down there). Well my clothes will forever remain flourless thanks to this thoughtful gift!

As if THAT wasn't enough. The same day this picture was taken Joe snuck out of a store we were shopping in at the mall and I didn't notice. I didn't have a clue, in fact, I was waiting for him by the fitting rooms for a while because I thought he was trying on jeans when he disappeared. After a few mintues some shoes caught my eye so when I saw him a while later and he explained he couldn't find any jeans I didn't think anything of it. Then just as we were walking out of the mall I heard this weird crinkling sound coming from him when he walked. I put my hand on his back and said "something on you is making a weird sound" and  I did I felt something... in a bag. Engagement ring? Haha... no. He pulled out Jason Aldean's new cd from being under his shirt and handed it to me. What a guy.... what a guy!

Halloween Cookies

I have literally been looking forward to making Halloween themed cookies for a few months now and I finally got to fullfill my urge today and I still have more I want to do. Frankensteins were the cookies I was looking forward to doing the most but when all was said and done, the Mummies turned out better than I had imagined they would! Anywho... here they are!

Nightmare Before Christmas Cookies

Yesterday I spent many hours filling orders for Star Wars cookies and Nightmare Before Christmas Cookies. They turned out great! Today I just gave myself time to complete my 2 dozen Super Hero cookies and then I would have a few days off. Well.. remember when I mentioned my dog has separation anxiety? Well... FUNNY STORY. When I went to the store to get butter and some other things I wrapped him in his Thundershirt and was literally gone about 30 minutes. When I came home the first thing I saw besides my dog's face was something green and black and round on the floor. Hmmm..?? What's that? I asked myself. Within seconds I reached the kitchen to find a cluster of little round things all over the floor surrounded by crumbs and colors of green, black, purple.... and many more. MY DOG ATE MY NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS COOKIES THAT I SPENT HOURS ON YESTERDAY. Now, in his defense (which is REALLY hard for me to mention) I forgot to put the cookies away when I left. After banishing the dog, not so nicely, to the back porch I sat on the floor and let a few tears shed before I picked myself up, brushed up the crumbs, called Joe, and started baking cookies again. I have hours of work ahead of me considering I had to bake over 50 cookies to make up for the lost work and the work I have to do today. That alone took 3.5 hours. I tried really, very hard to look on the bright side and I guess the bright side is that the Star Wars cookies were already packaged and I got pictures of the cookies before the dog ate them. Also, it shouldn't take me so long to make them since I have the process down. On the not so bright side, my lackluster affection for my dog has plummeted and now I only like him enough to feed him on a regular basis. I'm sure I'll forgive him eventually... probably not until these cookies are done and I can sleep. Until then, I don't like him and I'm not ashamed to say it. So the Thundershirt will be returned and I'm going to get my $40 back! Well... here are the pictures I managed to take before Houdini had his morning snack....

 

 

Mean Green Juice Cleanse!

Today is the official start to a juice cleanse that Joe and I are doing. His juicer came yesterday in the mail so we went to the grocery store to get our fruits/veggies, a pizza, some Woodchuck, and chocolate pie. Of course the pizza, hard cider, and pie are NOT a part of the diet (I wish). We were having one last meal before starting our juice diet. Initially we were going to do 2 weeks... but after seeing exactly how many groceries we need to make this juice, we might be cutting it down to a week. You are supposed to drink this 6 times a day...

1 piece ginger

 1 cucumber

 1/2 lemon

 6 kale leaves

 2 granny smith apples

 4 celery stalks

Yeah.. that's a lot of groceries. And although you drink it 6x a day, it makes two full sized glasses, so really you are drinking 12 glasses of it a day!

We started the morning by weighing ourselves and making our juice. After weighing myself I am toying with the idea of never working out and dieting again... because I weighed the same as I did in Georgia when I was working out 5-6 days a week and logging everything I ate. But.. that's besides the point. We are doing the cleanse to do just that... cleanse ourselves. It really didn't taste all that bad! I thought it would be awful but the lemon and ginger really save it. This is only the first juice of the first day... I might be singing a different tune 6 days from now!

CHEERS!!

Engagement cookies

I cannot believe how fast my Etsy account has taken off. I currently have 7 sold orders... 5 of which were ordered in the past week! So along with going to the balloon fiesta and having family over, I spent a great deal of time baking and decorating.I have made 24 super heroes, engagement cookies, Red Hat Society cookies, and more lion cookies. I didn't have a ring cookie cutter, so I had to create these shapes myself! These are all the cookies I have been up to in the past week... but the lion cookies didn't make it on. So I have been one busy girl! I thought I would put the super heroes on again since I felt I was more experienced and that they turned out even better the second time! I actually have ANOTHER order of super heroes for next weekend!

Balloon Fiesta

This was a great weekend after the Friday I just had!! This is the week of the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque... it's a big deal down here. People come from all over the world. There are TONS of hot air balloons that go up in the morning and float over the city. Today we even saw some fly over our apartment. I had no idea that they could make a hot air palloon in pretty much any shape desired. We saw an Elvis, a pig, an astronaut, and even a Darth Vader mask!

Joe's mom, brother, and grandma came to visit for the weekend to experience the balloon fiesta and spend some quality family time together in Albuquerque.

Joe and I (It was pretty cole that morning!)

Brothers

Elvis... my favorite balloon!

TGIF.. I Think Not

Friday was such a looooooong day. Dierks had been sick for a couple of days and after waking up yet again to find he had thrown up in "his" bedroom I decided to take him to the vet. Let me just say that ever since I moved my emotions have been going haywire. I am very happy and LOVE Albuquerque (and of course Joseph) but I will cry at the drop of a hat! I will cry at commercials, TLC shows.... including "Say Yes to the Dress", I cried when the dog pooped in the bathroom. So when it came to my little meow meow being sick, I was a little sensitive. I got him an early morning appointment and when the Dr. started looking at him he said that he was dehydrated and that if we didn't get this all solved he was going to have to be hospitalized... at TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS. I. bawled. I bawled because I knew all the tests and shots were going to cost a lot of money and I currently have no income. I love my Dierks so much, but I was afraid little kitty was going to have to go to sleep.. indefinitely if something was seriously wrong and I couldn't afford it. I gave a pitiful look to the doctor and said "Sorry, I'm a crier.... I'm sure a lot of people cry in here, huh?"..... response from doctor and nurse?...... blank stares. "Or not," I said.

 In the end I chose a few of the options, got some meds, got the cat re-hydrated, and came back home.

I am happy to say that $345 later, Dierks is finally eating and drinking water again and hasn't thrown up in 36 hours.

Dierks the first day I got him (7 weeks old)

Not much has changed!

But the BEST part of the day was finding that the dog hadn't destroyed the house or gone to the bathroom anywhere in the apartment while I was gone. (We decided to stop putting him in the kennel after his Houdini escape).

WAIT WAIT... I'M NOT DONE!

I now have 3, yes THREE etsy orders this week. That makes 7 orders for this month so far! At the last minute last night I got an order for 2 dozen super hero cookies and she wants them by next Friday. Considering that these cookies are 4" x 5", and I had 2 orders due at the same time... I thought I should start baking. I baked, and baked, and baked. and after making three batches of cookie dough... I was short by 3 gingerbread men. So I had to make another batch just for three cookies. It was a long day, oh yes, but at the end everything was fixed. Now I am looking forward to a weekend at the Balloon Festival with Joe's family.

Royal Icing Recipe

So... I figured it was about time that I actually did a tutorial on sugar cookies. I figured the best, and easiest way to start would be with royal icing. There are a lot of different icing recipes out there and I've tried quite a few. Most people LOVE the soft icing that you might find on a Tollhouse cookie, but for decorating and shipping, that frosting just doesn't work. If you don't use the right kind of frosting on your sugar cookie then you won't be able to get detailed cookies, the colors will bleed, and all your work will have been for nothing because if they are touched then the frosting smushes. I have literally dropped a cookie on the counter that had dried royal icing on it and it remained perfectly intact.

Now.. that does NOT mean that royal icing is as hard as cement. Your cookies can break and, yes, they do have a crunch... but they still taste YUMMY.

Ok.. so here goes.

The royal icing recipe is...

2lb bag of powdered sugar
1/3 cup +  Tbsp meringue powder
3/4 cup water
2 tsp flavoring extract (I do 1 tsp vanilla and 1 tsp almond)

So here's how you do it!

First mix your powdered sugar and meringue powder

Word of caution.... keep your mixer on low speed or you will have powdered sugar everywhere.... learned that the hard way



Add your flavoring to your water and slowly add to mixer

And then magic happens! I like to keep it on medium speed for a minute then crank it to high. It takes about 5 minutes for the icing to get as stiff as you need it to be. By the time you're done you should be able to pull out your whisk and the frosting should be stiff enough to not bend.

At this point the frosting has NOT been mixed enough. See how the peak bends over on itself?



This is what it should look like... stiff enough to keep it's shape, even if you tip it to the side or upside down!

See? Still the same shape, it doesn't bend.

In the picture the frosting looks deceptively yellow, it is actually very white. If you want PURE white, do not use colored flavoring and you can even add white food coloring. Personally, I usually just use it as is if I want white frosting. How to color your icing and get the right consistency for piping and flooding is a whole new post and will have to wait until I actually remember to document it as I'm making royal icing.