Since The Girl was sick, I wanted dinner for Valentine's Day to be simple, but kinda fun. So I decided on a picnic style meal with fruits, vegetables, cheeses and crackers. I set The Boy up with a cutting board, a small heart cookie cutter, and a pile of sliced cheese (slice your own or go for the fast option by buying a party tray of sliced cheese). I was happy to see how independent he was with the task and he was so proud to have contributed to the festive meal.
We're getting a little stir crazy on day 4 of being trapped in the house due to The Girl's cold and fever. (At least she's in a reasonably good mood most of the time.) Today I broke out the butcher paper (I have 4' wide Kraft colored from another project, but I'd suggest a 3' white roll if you were going to invest) and traced life sized images of The Boy and The Girl. Then they each colored themselves. I did the brown hair on each of them before they both decided they wanted pink hair. The Boy decided his pink hair was so long it was in his eyes and he needed to go see the barber.
There was an unfortunate cookie-ing situation in December where I made and decorated 12 dozen cookies and came down with a stomach bug the night I finished them. I just couldn't bring myself to give my friends their holiday gift that could be laced with the virus that leveled me. The cookies sat on the counter for weeks. I took more pictures. Then they went in the trash.
The Boy and I decided that after New Year's we would make dinosaur cookies for our good buddies. As we inched closer and closer it because apparent that those dinosaurs would be a Valentine's gift. So naturally we made some hearts as well.
Just cause I find data fascinating, last weekend I spent three hours baking 100 cookies (two batches, half of which are in my freezer to decorate next week), and Monday night I spent three hours making icing and mixing 10 different colors/consistencies. Then Tuesday morning there were three of us decorating cookies for about three hours. In that time I decorated 14 dinosaurs and 9 hearts, in addition to miscellaneous toddler wrangling. We decorated 50 cookies total.
The Dinosaurs
I was pleased to be able to get a 20-second flood icing consistency to be able to pipe the outline and flood with the same bottle of icing. I love the smooth finished look. I never cease to be amazed at how flashy wet-on-wet designs can be... like the marbling on some of Sharon's heart cookies below.
So I decorated my 14 dinosaurs with flood icing. (Note the stegosaurus with no tail. Oops.)
They were so cute. I loved them! I just had to add the details. I went for minimalist, an eye and a mouth (using my piping consistency icing) for each dino. The details just took a couple minutes, but made such a difference!
My red flood icing was a little thick, but overall I was very happy with the results. I can't wait to make more of them! What colors should I use next time? Oh, and that heart cookie, that's my last little bit of dough. No waste. I always roll out the last bit so I have another cookie to practice on. When I thinned out my red flood icing to fix it that was my first cookie. In honor of Valentine's Day I made it a heart.
The Hearts
The Boy likes to help. His preferred method is for me to flood the cookie. Then he puts in wet-on-wet dots of other colors. Then he "scrambles" with a toothpick. I saved the last seven hearts for him to decorate since I did the rest of the batch while he was at school.
