Fall Sugar Cookies & Cookie Decorating Class

A few weeks ago when I posted the fall cookies that I had made I said that I would upload the video of my Instagram stories with the how-to/instructional videos I posted. So here is the 14 and a half minute video in all of it's glory. I do not claim to be a master cookie decorator or vlogger, but there are a lot of good basics covered in the video.

The blogger that I mention a few times is Sweet Sugar Belle I use her cookie recipe, royal icing recipe, and I used a tutorial of hers for the fall icing colors.

These are the finished cookies from the video:

Cookie Decorating Class

Now I have also had quite a few people ask about learning how to decorate cookies and I thought why not put together a little class before Christmas. As I said before, I am not a master cookie decorator, but I am able to teach the basics so that you could go and decorate cookies on your own. During the class/workshop you will learn about the basics of cookie decorating: coloring icing, icing consistency, piping, flooding, wet on wet decorating, marbling, and wet on dry decorating. I will bake cookies and make royal icing ahead of time. We would decorate Christmas cookies that you could recreate on your own before Christmas and because Christmas cookies are some of the most fun to decorate! 

These are some of the Christmas cookies that I made a few years ago. We would be learning the techniques needed to make similar cookies. You would be going home with similar designs of cookies.  

My plan is that you will go home with:

• 6-10 decorated cookies (along the lines of those pictured above)

• Cookie and royal icing recipes

• A few basic cookie decorating tools

• The skills to decorate your own sugar cookies!

I am thinking of a Saturday morning 9-12 and then if people want to stay longer decorating cookies there is that option and if people have to go then that works too. Right now I am thinking either Nov. 25th (Saturday after Thanksgiving) or December 9th. This is a link to a survey to vote on a date if you are interested. I would charge $30 to cover the supplies and ingredients. Feel free to call, text or message me if you are interested!

Our House!

I figured it was about time to post some pictures of our house now that we have lived here for you know... over four months..... Things have been pretty busy around here and I just haven't gotten around to it. But, they are up now!! These pictures are from the listing, when we looked at the house and when we first moved in. We have already changed some stuff, but I don't have any decent pictures of the changes. Hopefully during winter break (less than two months away!) I will be able to take some nice pictures of the projects we have done. Also I am really hoping to be able to get quite a few projects finished up in the first two and a half weeks of December before we fly back to the West Coast!

We are on a corner lot and this is the view from the intersection.

The entry way. Front door is to the right and the picture was taken from the dining room. The door in the hallway is to the guest bathroom.

The dining room. Picture was taken from the kitchen. The light fixture is going to be changed out and I am excited about my plans for the new light fixture, and hopefully it will be up by December! Also we have plans to put in cabinets to create a dry bar/buffet/china hutch on the right wall. Below is a rough mock up.

Not the best picture, but you get an idea of how the entry way and dining room connect.

The kitchen. Picture was taken from the dining room.

The kitchen from another angle. Picture was taken from the hallway.

The living room. Picture taken from the back door. The room is now painted grey!

View from the living room into the master bedroom.

View from the back door to the front of the house.

And a picture of the empty room when we moved in taken from the master bedroom door.

Master bedroom. Picture taken from one of the corners. We are going to paint this room blue, but just need to find the time to get it painted which will hopefully happen in December.

Empty master bedroom from when we first moved in. Picture was taken from the living room doorway.

Master bathroom. We have plans to make that door a wall and make another closet on that side of the room. This room is going to be painted light grey in December! The door off the hallway you see is the guest room and you can barley see the dining room through the hallway.

View of the bathroom from the master bedroom doorway. We took those cabinets down so that we could stack our washer and dryer and have more space in the closet that will eventually be there.

The shower in the master bedroom.

The hallway looking from the master bathroom doorway to the kitchen. Someone decided that it would be a lovely idea to fill the hole left from moving the air return with leftover backsplash from the kitchen. Also the trim around the tile is higher than the floor and the tile is lower than the floor, which means there are three floor heights. When we create the closet in the master bath, the plan is to take some of the flooring from inside the closet and patch this in a much better way. We are looking forward to having one floor height and not stub toes walking in the hallway. Anyway, enough about the hallway floor...

This is the only picture I have of the guest room from when we were looking at the house. This is our guest room/craft room/office. It is painted and new furniture is there! I got halfway through unpacking and organizing all my craft stuff before school started so the room is still a bit disheveled... 

Guest bathroom is across from the guest room in the hallway. This room is going to get painted as well because it feels like a cave painted charcoal. I'm thinking a cream, but haven't settled on a color yet.

The back of the house. It is amazing how much that landscaping has grown since this picture was taken until now!!

The backyard with a fire pit!

So that is the whole house! We have enjoyed doing some projects already around the house and are excited about our plans for future projects! We are going back and correcting some projects that were done by previous owners, like the hallway floor and putting baseboards up as crown molding. Overall, we have loved learning about taking care of a home and doing projects around the house. I doubt that I will be updating the blog with any house projects before winter break, but hopefully I will be able to post about all of our completed and in progress projects in December! Thanks for reading!!

Bridal Shower in Oregon!

Last weekend I was back in Oregon for one of my best friend's bridal shower and bachelorette party. It was great to be home for a long weekend to visit my parents and celebrate Ashley. I have had a lot of time of my hands since finishing AmeriCorps in July for all my projects and DIYs. Did I set a lot of projects out for myself? Probably, but I had a lot of fun with all of them! For this post I am pretty much going to just post pictures and some short descriptions. If anyone is interested in detailed tutorials I can always write one :)

These were some of my inspiration pictures from Pinterest

1. Hostess with the Mostess 2. AWorkofHeartSA 3. Lazy Caterpillar

4. Born & Bread 5. Unknown (let me know if you know the source!)

6. Craftivity Designs 7. Ali's Sweet Tooth Cookies 8. Bake at 350

9. For the Love of Cookies 10. DoughmesticHousewife 

This was my version of the entrance sign. Originally I was going to make it a sandwich board and have a thank you message on the other side, but I ran out of time. Oh well...I think it still turned out pretty well! 

You can't totally tell from here, but the big letters on the table are covered in glitter. The fabric banner is made of lace, tulle, burlap and two different gold ribbons. The paper banner that says dessert is made of different coordinating scrapbook papers. I cut the letters out of white card stock and glued them onto the scrapbook paper.

I made a set of bridal themed sugar cookies to eat during the shower. I made a bunch of wedding dresses for favors, but I didn't get a picture of the cookies at the shower :(

Some of the cookies hadn't completely dried by the time I packed them for my flight to Oregon and got a little smashed during the trip. I ended up doing a bit of the details in Oregon which worked out pretty well.  

Two of the games we played were blind cheese and wine tasting games. The guests had the opportunity to taste five different cheeses and five different wines and the people with the most correct guesses won.

I made little signs with types of cheeses, varietals of wine and regions of wine to assist guests with their guesses.

Below are the scorecards I designed. They were front and back so each person just needed one card.

You can kind of see the "D" wine cork in the background that I made to go along with the wine game. All of the personalized and gold decor was my shower gift to Ashley. I intentionally incorporated gold into the shower since I knew it was one of her wedding colors :)

I was personally really happy with how the paper banners turned out. Also if you happen to have a silhouette machine they would be super easy to make since you wouldn't have to cut the letters by hand.

Gifts! Also my mom picked up all of the flowers from the Salem farmer's market and they were already arranged. Score!

The date banner is just burlap rectangles that I painted her wedding date on. The doily banner is just paper doilies folded in half and glued together. Both easy peasy!

Ashley and me! We have been friends since 3rd grade and I can't imagine life with out her! Love you Ash!!

I'm so glad my mom and I got a picture together since it seems like we often don't at events like this.

It was so great to see old friends and catch up on life. Ashley's sister-in-law Melissa made some wonderful food that was devoured. 

Guests were a little hesitant with the wine and cheese games at first, but I think everyone had fun in the end.

Opening presents is always a fun part of any shower!

Nathan's (the groom) aunts were able to come to the shower as well. It was fun getting to hear about Nathan from all of them.

As I said before, I forgot to get a picture of the wedding dress cookie favors and the champagne bottle guest book :( However, I did remember to take a picture of the cookies at my parents house before they were all packaged and displayed.

Later that night the bridesmaids that were in town went out to dinner and up to Portland for the Bachelorette Party!

Overall it was a great weekend at home that was filled with friends and family. I took a red eye flight back Sunday and Monday finished up some new hire requirements for my new JOB! I start Monday September 15th as a Teacher Assistant with Head Start here in Nashville. I am really excited to start working again...although you may not have know I wasn't working. I am sure I will have more to write about the new job in the coming weeks!

I hope you enjoyed reading about the shower and maybe got some inspiration for an event or party you have coming up. As I said before, if you would like more details or a tutorial on one of the DIYs just let me know :)