Valentine's Day Treats

I wanted to think of something fun to make for Brady to take to his friends and teachers at school for Valentines' Day and I came across the idea of sugar cookie pops.  Actually, I first got the idea because someone mentioned sending a cookie bouquet to their husband for Valentine's Day and when I went to the site and saw how much they were charging for these heart-shaped cookies on a stick I thought, I can do that!

Anyway, I got my recipe and inspiration from this blog from Our Best Bites.  I made the sugar cookies on Friday night and stored them in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  I then made the icing on Saturday morning and added the glaze layer and left them out to dry.  I added the piping layer during Brady's nap on Saturday afternoon and left them out to dry until Sunday, when I wrapped them up.  They turned out so cute and they were DELICIOUS!  Quite possibly the best sugar cookies I've ever had.  Definitely the best ones I've ever made.  So, here are a few photos of the steps along the way...

Friday Night:
I bought popsicle sticks at Party City and a heart-shaped cookie cutter at Michael's.  I made the sugar cookie dough, rolled it out to about 1/4" thickness and stuck it in the freezer for about 15 minutes.  I then cut out the large hearts and stuck the popsicle sticks into them so they went a little more than half way up the heart.  I baked the cookies for a little longer than I would normally because I wanted them to be stiff enough to stay on the sticks.  Here you can see a couple of them cooling on the rack:

After baking all of the cookies I put them in my cake carrier and left them in the refrigerator overnight.

Saturday morning:
On Saturday morning I made the icing and began adding the glaze to the cookies.  I did half of them with white glaze and half with pink.

I then left them out to dry for a couple of hours.

Saturday afternoon:
After the bottom layer was dry I added the piping.  I used white on the pink glaze and used red on the white glaze.

As you can see here, my white piping icing wasn't quite thick enough, so my "XO" ran together on the top left cookie.  So, I had to eat it myself!  :)

I then left the cookies out so that the icing could dry overnight.

Sunday:
On Sunday the icing was completely dry and hard enough that I could wrap them up.  I had some cellophane bags leftover from the Halloween treat bags I made and I bought some ribbon at Michael's.

Brady picked out Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Valentine's at Target and we attached them to the back of the cookie pops:

Here they are all wrapped up!

I stuck them in some blumeboxes that I had leftover from Brady's birthday party decorations and made my own cookie bouquets!

They were a huge hit and, as I said before, very tasty!  Brady agrees:

Everyday moments

MrKLB and I are both working on becoming better photographers.  Not because we want to be professionals one day, but because (like most parents) we want to try to capture the moments that happen as our children grow up all too quickly.  I take a LOT of photos.  Sometimes it's a big event like Christmas or a birthday party, but most of the time it's just every day moments that I want to remember.  MrKLB sometimes gets tired of me getting out the camera or asking him to take photos, but he's a really good sport and I know it's because he knows how happy we'll be to have these photos to look back on when our little man is all grown up.

The majority of the photos I take are not technically perfect.  I do try to use our DSLR on manual mode when I think about it, but mostly use it on Aperture Priority mode.  Often I end up with photos that aren't perfectly lit, aren't in focus, or are under or over exposed.  I have learned some tricks on how to correct a few things in post processing, but really that's not the point.  The point is that the photos I take are emotionally perfect.  I was reading a photography blog the other day about how most people don't take technically perfect photos every day, but the emotionally perfect photos - the ones that capture a moment or expression that you want to remember - those are the ones that will be looked back upon fondly and bring back a cherished memory.  Of course, if I could take an emotionally perfect photo that is technically perfect, I'd prefer that!

Anyway, on the topic of everyday moments, I had MrKLB take a few photos of Brady during bath time last night because he is always such a happy baby during baths and I think "we really have to get some pictures of this!" and then I forget because the camera generally isn't in the bathroom.  We got a few shots that I am in love with... and I will look back on these in the future and remember what a fun little guy he is!

When I was looking at these photos it made me start looking back at old photos and I found this one of Brady taking a bath at 8 months old (he's 18 months now).  Such a sweet face... he's grown so much since then!

Another everyday moment I like to capture lately is how much Brady loves on his puppies.  He loves both of them equally, but our yellow lab is a little more forgiving of him sitting, laying, or pulling on her, and he just loves to give her hugs!  Here are a couple of shots that I took that were not posed or styled or technically perfect, but I love them:

Brady also loves to read and I love it when he sits down in the floor and opens a book and flips through it... totally acting like he can read every word on the page!

And peek-a-boo!  I love that this never gets old for him!  If he's upset about something and you want to make him smile... just get him to play peek-a-boo!  When you find him behind those little pudgy hands, he'll have a huge grin on his face!

Pure joy!  That's what I will remember about Brady at this age.  He really knows how to feel pure joy!

Anyway, that's just what was on my mind today.  Hopefully you'll be inspired to keep the camera handy and take some photos of your everyday moments, too!

A homemade gift: Yarn Wrapped Letters

I was in need of a cute, inexpensive gift idea for Christmas presents for two of my nieces who are 5 and 9 when I came across this cute craft project for yarn wrapped letters.  My nieces love things for their rooms and I thought the idea of hanging their monograms on the wall in the form of these yarn wrapped letters would be a really neat idea.  So, a couple of weeks before Christmas I went to Michael's to get the letters and yarn, and I got started.

One girl's room is blue and pink and the other is pink and purple so I tried to match those themes.  I got white wooden letters in different sizes and yarn from Michael's.  I took some in-progress photos but I can't seem to find them anywhere so here is the finished version:

You can see that I wasn't perfect at geting al of the little corners covered but I still think they turned out pretty well...

I added strings so they could be hung and then hung them on a piece of cardboard so that I could box them up and wrap them for gifts.

The girls loved them and hopefully next time I go see them I can get a shot of the finished product in their rooms!

Christmas Cards

I ordered our Christmas cards from Shutterfly this year..... and it made me want to go back and look at our cards from years past.  So, here they are...

Our first Christmas card together was in 2006, the year we were married.  So, we used a photo from the wedding and created a photo card using Snapfish.  FYI... Charlie Pappas was our fabulous wedding photographer!

Christmas 2007... a new member joined our family.  Our beloved yellow lab, Butters, who is truly our first child.  I designed these myself, printed them on photo paper and then affixed them to brown cardstock.

Christmas 2008... our family had grown yet again!  Ringo joined our family in February of that year.  I also designed these myself (apparently I was into polka dots for a while!) and printed them using Vistaprint.  They were folded cards and here is the front:

This is the inside of our cards that year.  We announced to our extended family and friends that we were having a baby!

And in 2009 our baby boy joined the family!  These photos were taken by Jody Lynn Photography and we used one of the card designs she had to choose from, with some modifications.  This is the front:

And this is the inside (photo on the left, text and photos on the right):

Which brings us to 2010!  Our little man is growing up!  These photos were taken by Danielle Bryson Photography and I LOVE how they turned out!  I used Shutterfly to make the cards, and got 50 free thanks to my earlier blog post!  Here is the front of the card:

And this is the inside of the card:

So, there you go - 5 years of Christmas cards and many more to come!

Our Holiday Photos... an adventure, but totally worth it!

We had some photos taken in November because it had been several months since we had any taken and we hoped we would get one (or more) to use for our Christmas cards.  We signed up for a mini session with the amazing Danielle Bryson of Danielle Bryson Photography, I picked out the outfits way ahead of time, and thought we were all set.

Well, on the day of the shoot we were late leaving the house, had trouble finding the park where we were supposed to meet her, and it started sprinkling on our way there.  I was stressed, to say the least.  Oh, and did I mention our dogs were with us because we were determined to get a photo with them for the Christmas cards??  Um, yeah.  We arrived and Danielle was great and didn't chastise us for being late but Brady was not very cooperative (he was distracted by the other dogs in the park) and then because it was so cloudy we lost our light and basically it got dark about 20 minutes sooner than we expected.  Danielle did manage to get a few good shots of us before it got dark but she wasn't 100% satisfied so she contacted me and offered to do another shoot for free and give us those pictures in addition to any good ones she got from the first shoot.  She is amazing!

So, we planned to meet up again about a week after Thanksgiving.  It was cold that day, but not painfully so - until we got to the park!  The wind was blowing so hard that we basically couldn't stand to be outside without our coats on and poor Brady was just freezing!  So, she worked quickly to get a few shots of Brady in his outfit he wore to see Santa (we saw Santa that morning), then we threw on his sweater, coat, and hat and grabbed our coats and huddled for warmth!  It was sooo cold!  It felt like we were only out there for about 5 minutes and we were all back in the warmth of our cars.

Danielle sent me the picture the next day (I told you she is awesome) and she got some fantastic shots!  I am really so happy with how the pictures turned out and we got more than enough good ones for our holiday cards and I have ordered prints for our parents as gifts.

So, without further ado, here are some of my favorites:

From the first shoot:

Family shot with our puppies!

You can see how dark it actually got outside!  I still think this one is cute, though:

From our second shoot... Brady in his cute vest and tie after visiting Santa:

One of my favorite pictures of Brady - ever:

I think you can FEEL how cold it was by looking at this photo:

After we grabbed coats, hats, scarves and huddled for warmth!

I love these guys and I love this photo!

Thanks again to Danielle for being so awesome!