I'm a little behind in posting on my blog.
Those folks that know me personally know that this is a busy month for me . . . It's Circuit Court time in our county and my job as public defender requires that I be there for court!
But even with me . . . ACTUALLY working . . . I have still found time to play on the farm!
Last weekend we celebrated the birthday of two of my favorite little ones! Lex and Mary Beth!
Their sweet momma, Vicky, is one of my dearest and best friends! She's the one I would call if I was ever arrested! Ha!
I have been wanting to make some of those fancy cut out cookies with the royal icing that you see all over the internet . . . I follow some of the fancy cookie blogs and one of them, Bake at 350, has recipes and instructions for making these fancy cookies.
I have been toying with the idea of making cowboy cookies for Shane's party. But before I tackled making fancy cookies for his party, I decided I would try making some for Lex and Mary Beth's birthday party . . . Then freeze some to see if you could do that . . . a little experimentation with the fancy cookies. I used the cut-out cookie recipe on the Bake at 350 website for the cookies.
Vicky wasn't doing any kind of theme for the little ones' birthday so I went with typical boy/girl designs for the cookies . . . football, cowboy, butterflies, flowers . . .
The cookie dough is great to work with for cut out cookies. The trick to the fancy cookies is the royal icing. It's what makes the cookies so fancy cause it's great for decorating and it hardens great! These are the kind of cookies you've seen Martha Stewart making on her show. I made a batch of the royal icing using the Bake at 350 recipe and following her excellent instructions.
I made a glorious mess too . . .
I divided the icing up into 4 bowls cause that's how many icing couplings I had! :D
I outlined the cookies first with the icing using a #2 tip:
I even had a little help decorating the cookies:
After outlining the cookies, I mixed a teaspoon of water into the frosting until I got it to the consistency I needed to "flood" the cookies. You need to read Bake at 350 to get the real instructions for icing the cookies. I used a bottle for "flooding" the cookies and not a decorating bag. I'm not an expert in this area . . . as you will see when I go further . . . Here are the cookies after I "flooded" them with the icing:
After I was finished filling in the cookies, I then decorated them with the royal icing . . . not the icing I thinned . . . but the "thicker" version. I had tinted the icing into 4 different colors. I used decorating bags with #2 and #3 tips. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I must confess that I sometimes used a #5 tip :) because I don't have enough of the smaller tips)
These cookies are not too sweet. If you like sweet icing, like buttercream icing, then these cookies may not be the ones for you. Everyone at the party liked them. I put Lex and Mary Beth's names on most of the cookies.
The party was a lot of fun! Vicky is a low stress kind of momma . . . not like me! I work myself up into a tizzy weeks in advance planning my boys' parties . . . I wish I could be like Vicky . . . so laid back and relaxed. . .
She made her little ones a strawberry cake for their birthday . . .
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| Mary Beth |
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| Lex |
There was a wide range in ages of the children at the party. Lots of the little ones have older brothers and sisters around Zach's age.
All of these same children will be at Shane's party in a week . . .
Notice Shane isn't at the table. He and his bestie, Colt, were more interested in playing with Lex's toys than eating pizza. After everyone was finished, then Shane came to the table wanting to eat.
He decided to take some pictures of everyone at the party . . .
Here's Vicky and me:
Morgan, Callie, and Morgan's baby, Sarah Beth:
His pizza:
His blue kool-aid:
There are more pictures, but I'll spare you! Ha!
Here's Morgan's momma and Morgan's oldest baby:
They were just too pretty not to put in my blog! I love Mary Ann! and Mary Milton too!
I love this picture of Mary Beth . . . she is soooo pretty!
And here's Lex with the present we got him. . . . You can never go wrong with some kind of truck!
Mary Ann gave this book to Mary Beth, and it was sooo funny to me and Vicky cause I gave that same book to Vicky a few years ago! Ha!
And Lex is so cute in this picture . . . he's such a funny sweet boy!
Of course, Shane was right up in there trying to "help" Lex open his presents:
And Shane had to "help" Mary Beth too.
Vicky's babies are sooo sweet. They didn't seem to mind all the "help" they got from all the children at the party. I wish my little one would behave so well. :/
One last picture . . . cause he's sooo cute . . .
The big birthday present from mom and dad was the super cool basketball goal! Woohoo!
It was sooo much fun! It got me all stirred up with excitement for Shane's upcoming birthday party! Shane too! It's all he can talk about . . . "my birthday party . . ." this and that! :D
On Sunday morning, we woke up to some new additions to our farm family . . .
Four baby kittens!
Yellow cat is such a good momma! She's been so good taking care of her babies! I can't wait until we can play with them! It's killing me that I can't clean out that box, but Dave says I have to wait a little while . . . so I don't freak Yellow cat out! Apparently she wouldn't like me messing with her nest/box, but I want to get her a cleaner blanket and get the leaves out of the box! If I had known she was fixing to have some kittens, I would have fixed her box up more appropriately!
That's all for now . . . I have lots more to blog about . . . what with Shane's birthday party looming in the near future . . . but I've already made this post longer than most people can stand!
Until tomorrow . . . lots of love from . . .
the Ferrell boys and me!
Great job on the cookies. Thanks for sharing, it's fun seeing everyone!
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