love is in the air {a valentine blog hop}

Welcome to my castle for lucky stop #7 on the {Love is in the Air} Blog Hop!  Thanks for stopping by today.

Our lovely hostess is Paulette from {Around the Block with Scrapalette}.  You should have arrived from Cindy’s blog {In Love With Paper}, but if you didn’t that’s okay!  Jump in here or go back to Paulette’s page and follow on the fun to the end.  The list of my fellow hoppers is at the bottom of the post.  There might be a little bit of a giveaway down there too.  Maybe.

If you came here looking for a paper project, you’re going to be disappointed today.  I decided to go a different direction and broke out my Cricut Cake.  I love this little machine almost as much as I love my regular Cricut Expression.

I’ve been baking since I was eight years old (that’s 28 years for those who like to count), and sugar cookies are one of my favorite things to make.  For me, decorating is relaxing. A stress-reliever of sorts. Sure, my hands and back hurt for a couple days after a big session, but it’s worth the while.

For many years, I avoided cutout sugar cookies like the plague.  It was my mother rubbing off on me though.  She had never had good luck, and I didn’t want to try.  But with the internet comes recipes. Mounds and gobs and thousands of recipes. After a little experimentation (and more than a few failures), I finally found a recipe that works.  It’s {the best rolled sugar cookies} recipe from AllRecipes.com, and they truly live up to their name.

 

The secret to successfully moving dough from the cutting surface to the pan is to roll the dough out on a silicone baking mat with plenty of flour. Don’t be afraid to use flour!

My collection of cookie cutters is huge, filling almost an entire shelf in the basement.  However, the three I chose for this project are quite special.  They were my grandmother’s, and I refuse to part with them. Ever!

Each one measures 3″ across, and they are absolutely perfect for topping with icing or gum paste.

Yes, gum paste.  It’s a baker’s playdough.  Stretchy, rubbery, sweet, and it dries hard if/when left out in the air too long.  It’s also one of the best things to cut with the Cake.

I use the recipe from { cricut.com/cake }. It’s easy to work with and tastes so SO much better than store-bought stuff.  The only ingredient that I didn’t have on hand was tylose powder.  Don’t let the fancy-schmancy name fool you…Wilton sells it as Gum-Tex.  You can find it right next to the meringue powder and cake coloring in the craft stores.  I ordered it from Amazon, though I could/should have picked it up at my favorite little cake supply store.

Don’t get on me about the corn syrup.

Or the Crisco.

Or the gelatin.  Really.  Just don’t.

I use my KitchenAid with the dough hook to do most of the mixing, but do finish it by hand to make sure the texture is right.  The hardest part of the whole thing is getting the color mixed in.  I use paste coloring, but you could use powdered or gel as well.  Stretching and twisting the gum paste like taffy works great.  Unfortunately, I ran out of red paste before I got to the color I really wanted (red), so we’re going with a dark pink that looks almost salmony.

After you get the gumpaste to the color you want, roll it out on your silicone mat or a piece of parchment as thin as you can get it.  Mine was about 1/8″ thick..  Then transfer it to a cutting mat that you’ve slathered with Crisco.

Roll it out a little more to make sure there are no air bubbles trapped, and pop the sheet into the freezer for 30-45 minutes.  This will help solidify the Crisco to the gumpaste, sticking it to the mat so it doesn’t slide around while in the machine.  Don’t forget this part!! Take my word for it…it ain’t pretty.

Now how to get the shapes?  Well, you can cut with your machine directly, but I can never get things sized right that way.  I’m a visual person and prefer to design in {Cricut Craft Room}, export the file to my Gypsy, and hook her up to the machine to do the cutting.

 If I had grabbed a little more gumpaste when I started, the entire mat would have been filled.  As it was, I made due with what I had.

 

Even so, it didn’t turn out exactly as planned.  You can see a heart in the upper left and one on the lower right got cut off.  Oops!  That’s definitely something you have to watch out for.

 

After pealing the shapes from the mat, and letting them dry overnight, I got out my handy dandy food-safe markers and did a little doodling with my AmeriColor Gourmet (food-safe) Writers.  I love these markers for sugar cookies.  My girls like to use them on plain, unfrosted cookies.  Crazy kids!

What’s next? Icing!  A lot of people use royal icing on their sugar cookies.  In my opinion, it’s flavorless, and I hate how hard it gets! Breaking the teeth of your guests is NOT something I recommend.  Instead, I’ve migrated to using a glaze.  It dries shiny and doesn’t layer like royal icing does, but it tastes a whole lot better and there’s no work involved in eating that cookie.  Again, the recipe I use comes from AllRecipes.com.

1 cup powdered sugar
2 tsp corn syrup
2 tsp milk
1/8 tsp almond extract
1/8 tsp lemon extract
1/4 tsp clear vanilla

Add milk, just a few drops at a time, to get it to the consistency you want it.  I use a piping bag and a #4 tip to do my outlines.  Then I thin the glaze down with a few drops of milk and spoon it into the center to fill out the rest of the cookie top.  This is when the gum paste toppers go on, too.

When the icing was dry, I mixed some luster dust with a few drops of vodka and painted shimmers on some of the toppers.  Apparently, I did things out of order this week.  Not sure what I was thinking.  This is what can happen when you use too much vodka.  It bled all over the place.

Don’t do it this way!  Here’s the right order…

1. paint with luster dust
2. color with markers
3. ice cookies and top with gum paste goodies

And here are the final results.

The black & white topped cookies were done with one of Wilton’s patterned sugar sheets.  I’m afraid I can’t give this product a good review.  The sheet I had was dry and brittle.  And it tasted like…well, it tasted a lot like slightly sweetened paper.  Certainly not the kind of thing I would serve company.  So while it’s pretty, I won’t be using it again.  I’d rather spend a little more time coloring with my AmeriColor markers.

And speaking of markers.  Who wants a set?  One (1) lucky duck is going to receive a new set of 10 AmeriColor (food-safe) Gourmet Writers. Leave a comment below (don’t forget to include your email address) for a chance to win.

 The winner will be chosen at random and announced Saturday, February 4th.

Your next destination is a visit with Michele from {MicheleGreen.com}. I’ll see you there!

Here’s the whole list…just in case you came in somewhere in the middle and want to see what everyone has in store.

1. Paulette from http://scrapalette.blogspot.com/
2. Dana from http://danascraftycorner.blogspot.com/
3. Beth from http://thunderbirdlindybydesign.blogspot.com/
4. Sis from http://papercraftscissors.wordpress.com/
5. Doreen from http://polkadotpaperprincess.blogspot.com/
6. Cindy from http://www.inlovewithpaper.blogspot.com/
7. Deb from http://www.queenmommy.com/ ** You are Here ** 
8. Michele from http://www.michelegreen.com/
9. Carolyn from http://cccscraproom.blogspot.com/
10. Colleen from http://scrappycol.blogspot.com/
11. Elizabeth from http://www.217creations.com/
12. Sukie from http://www.scrappindhilly.blogspot.com/
13. Sharon from http://designsbysharon.blogspot.com/
14. Renee from http://icameisawicreated.blogspot.com/
15. Tammy from http://www.scrapcavecreations.com/
16. Brenda from http://happyscrapper64.blogspot.com/
17. Amy from http://scrap-pix.blogspot.com/
18. Jami from http://thepaperfarm.blogspot.com/
19. Terri from http://scrappinwiththebug.blogspot.com/
20. Meg from http://peacockpaperie.blogspot.com/

Thanks for joining me for a little bit of fun in the kitchen!   Hope to see you again soon!

 

oh, my aching back!

I should know better than to take on more than one project at a time, but that’s what I’ve done. Again.  You’d think that maybe I might have learned by now, huh?  Nope.  I’m glutton for punishment, and aside from the pain, I enjoy every minute of it!

Spent a good portion of this evening making a little surprise to go in the boxes I’m sending out for a Valentine’s Day swap.  So so cute!  I promise to share…eventually, but want to keep it a secret until after reveal day.

Last night, I was up late making gum paste hearts for a quickly approaching deadline.  That’s right, the Love is in the Air Blog Hop is on Saturday!

I’ll have all the details soon.  But for now, here’s a hint (and some of you won’t be terribly surprised), I’ve been hanging out in the kitchen.  First there was a little bit of flour action.

 

Then I broke out the sugar…and the” power tools.”

 

I hope you’ll come back on Saturday to see what I’ve been up to, and then to join in on the rest of the hop.

housekeeping

Its time for a little housekeeping in the castle. I am one of those people who actually likes and looks forward to change.

Over the next few days Ill be working on a new template for my blog here. Im hoping it loads a little faster, looks a little better, and is a tiny but easier to maintain.

So keep your eyes open! And please dont freak out if Im down for a day or two during the transition. In trying to make thing seamless, you sometimes have to get a little creative.

magnetic chalkboard menu

As anyone who has ever bought a house knows, the place comes with a list of “to dos” longer than your arm.  In my case, the list is abso-freaking-lutely humongous.  We’re now 8 1/2 months into this gig, and I’m marking them off…slowly. Very very painfully slowly, but they’re coming off.

My latest completion is this beauty.

And some details of the days…

I actually started this project a few months ago.  I started with 4 (yes four) coats of magnetic paint.  That dried for about a week before I added 2 coats of chalkboard paint.  I waited that long because I started on Sunday and didn’t have enough time to finish before having to go back to work.  This was also during soccer season, so…well, I think you can guess how much “free time” I had at that point.

The plain chalkboard was great, and the girls were getting a lot of use out of it.  However, it didn’t fit the vision I had for the wall.

Then I got my Cricut (insert evil laugh here) and everything changed.  I added the vinyl lettering a little over a week ago, and love the way it turned out.  The red and white letters really pop on the black background, and the girls are staying on top of me to stay on top of the menu planning.

Win. Win.

Products used:

• Rust-oleum Magnetic Primer (4 coats)
• Rust-oleum Black flat chalkboard paint (2-3 coats)
• Oracle 631 vinyl in Cloud White and Ruby Glitter
• Cricut Light Chore Chart cartridge
• Cricut Lyrical Letters font cartridge

{shhhh} christmas gifts inside

Y’all know I’ve become a huge Pinterest junkie over the past few months. Right? Christmas is definitely the right time to pull out some of those ideas and put them to work. I did just that when making gifts for my sister and sister-in-law. They only read my blog when I link to it on Facebook (at least Im pretty sure they arent over here regularly), so I feel safe posting this before we open gifts Sunday afternoon.

So…Melissa and Sonya. Stop right now.

Stop this very minute.

You do NOT want to ready any further.

But I know you will. So…whatever.

I’ll still loves the both of ya.

For everyone else, the inspiration for their gifts this year came from Stacie at {The CrEaTiVe CraTe} who swiped it from Kristie at {Next to Heaven} who is either a super-creative organizational genius…or swiped it from somewhere else. Don’t you love how the internet works?

Here’s Kristie’s version of the weekly family planner:

And her awesome family launchpad:

I wanna know how much stuff really lives on that black bookcase. The one by my front door is overflowing. But…I digress.

I stayed up later than I wanted to last night putting together my own version of the frame planner. My frames are a little different, with nine 5×7 openings in each. I used my Cricut Expression with Cricut Craft Room and the {Chore Chart cartridge} to cut the vinyl I got from {ExpressionsVinyl}.**

After only a couple of boo-boos (I put the first Tuesday on the wrong direction and somehow only cut one Saturday) and a few small cuts from cleaning the frames glass, my efforts really paid off.

Heres the one for my sisters clan.

And my sister-in-laws version (which is actually the one I did first)

The frames are from {amazon}. I’m wishing I had ordered a third for myself! The family photos in the frames were taken at Grandmas 90th birthday celebration/family reunion in October.

I need to pick up a couple of dry erase markers tomorrow while the girls and I are out and about town. I have a wrapping party planned for tomorrow night. It involves me, a couple rolls of paper, some tape, ribbons, and a glass bottle of wine.

Disclaimers:
I took the photos last night with my iPhone after dark. WAY after dark. Like 10/11pm after dark. Please forgive their craptastic-ness. As Ive said before, I am not and never will be a photographer. I do own a decent camera though, and I should probably learn to use it better if Im going to keep blogging about my projects.

**I am not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned. I just like their stuff and use it!

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