LOTS of Cookie Cutters For Hubby's Birthday - and Eagle Scout engraved plate from AwardsEtc.

Hubby's birthday (the big 5-0!) is this weekend and I wanted to make cookies of some of his favorite things. Well it turned out that was 38 cookie cutters of his favorite things! I showed my son what I wanted to do and he said "choose 4 or 5". Stinker... he just didn't want to help wash all the cookie cutters afterward! Well somehow I was blessed with the best boy ever and he very graciously gave me his time last night and helped wash and dry all the cookie cutters. I'm being honest. He really helped graciously. Gotta love that kid!

 For those that have been asking, his Eagle Scout project is coming along very well. He and his scout troop built 3 benches in a garden on school campus. The next step was to order a brass plate to have the benches dedicated to the memory of my father, his grandfather. We found a great place on Etsy.com called AwardsEtc. run by a sweet gal named Mindy. My son told her what he had in mind and she sent over a proof of what it would look like and she suggested including a Boy Scout emblem. We ordered the engraved brass plate and it arrived almost immediately! It was extremely impressive to work with AwardsEtc. If you ever have a need for awards or engraved plated or whatever the case may be, I HIGHLY suggest AwardsEtc on Etsy.

So the next step is to install the personalized plate and finish up his Eagle packet paperwork and then he's ready to schedule his Board of Review! Here's one of the benches he built to test before having his scout troop work on them:

Don't forget to join in our 3rd COOKIE CHALLENGE! All the details here: http://www.cristinscookies.com/2011/09/cristins-cookie-challenge-3-baseball.html

Cristin's COOKIE CHALLENGE 3 - Baseball Cookies

Calling all bakers... it's time for Cristin's COOKIE CHALLENGE 3! This week I want to see lots of BASEBALL cookies, preferably in your favorite team colors. If you don't have baseball cookie cutters, then use a simple circle and make baseballs! Ideas are endless... baseballs, bats, jerseys, caps, mitts and more...

This will be my first ever time of baking baseball cookies, so I'm pretty excited. Join me! All you have to do is bake your baseball cookies and then post them to your Facebook page and tag Cristin's Cookies. If you have trouble tagging my site, then just post them directly to my Facebook page: Cristin's Cookies. Either way is fine. This weekend I will post all your baseball cookie pictures to my blog for everyone to enjoy.

Get baking and play along!

This is just because I wanted to add a photo and I LOVE this one ;-)

Last of the Hockey Cookies

And here are the hockey cookies all together that I made last week. Next up is a whole variety of cookies for my hubby's birthday. It's going to be A LOT... :-)

Boy Hockey Skates

Girl Hockey Skates

Defense

Sport Jersey

Hockey Pucks

Trophy

Blue Ribbon

Hockey Sticks

Team Plaque

Next up lots and lots of my hubby's favorite things... and hopefully some SF Giants baseball cookies before they are out!

More Hockey Cookies - Pucks & Jerseys

And the last of the hockey cookies.... which have all been eaten by the way and I got 1/2 of one (of 53 cookies)! My son is such a sweetie, he shared the last cookie with me while his dad sure didn't! ;-) These are hockey pucks and my son made the logo for his hockey team.

 Nick's hockey team won last night, but just barely! We were ahead by 3 points and then the opposing team made a big comeback and we were tied! We ended up winning in over-time! It was a very exciting game!

 I went on an awesome bike ride today. When I finished I was soaking wet from the light rain, but the rain was warm and it actually felt good. We pushed it HARD today riding very fast and it was an awesome work-out. I was worried about the ride today, but I decided to give it a go and I know God helped me to be stronger for facing my fear.

I finished with 53 miles, over 2,247 feet climbed and an average speed of 16.0. I also burned over 2,360 calories and only ate a power bar. I'm making some delicious baked pasta right now that will be so yummy after that ride. The ride wasn't all that long, but we pushed it hard against the wind to keep the pace up. My legs are already mush.... :-)

I hope you are doing something wonderfully fun and fulfilling with your weekend!

And The Award Goes To...

As you know, I made a bunch of hockey themed cookies this week. Unfortunately my son needed a last minute potluck food item to bring to school yesterday, so there aren't as many to bring to the hockey game tonight, but at least there is enough for each hockey player and coach. The trophies came from CopperGifts.com:

and some Blue Ribbons also from CopperGifts.com:

It has been blasting HOT here in California this week, but it's supposed to be getting cooler. I'm looking forward to a nice bike ride tomorrow. In the meantime, cross your fingers for another hockey win tonight! Have a wonderful weekend!

Girls Need Skates Too...

Girls need skates too right?!

My two girls are grown and out of the house, so it's just me and the boys here (yes hubby counts as a boy, believe me). Even the dog is a boy. Thankfully I can retreat to my pink home office when there is too much testosterone flying about ;-) So you can imagine how much I enjoy the opportunities to make some girly cookies. Since I made a whole bunch of hockey cookies this week, I decided to add in just a couple of girly ones.

Also some hockey sticks too:

A few more hockey cookies coming. The heat is finally starting to go away and it should be a nice, cooler weekend here and I can get back to baking. It's been a nice productive week though with finally getting all my photos watermarked and uploaded to my blog and Facebook. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

DEFENSE! Hockey Cookies

I have a lot of hockey cookies coming this week. I have to say that these DEFENSE cookies are my very favorite of the hockey cookies. They are just so fun! I used a plain rectangle cookie cutter that I bought from CopperGifts.com and printed out the D and Fence on my computer and used my KopyKake to trace it onto the cookie and then simply filled it in with icing. Easy and super cool.

 Here they are bagged. What a fun idea huh! They are my favorite.

 I also made these since my son is on the Bell Royal hockey team:

 and bagged with some hockey clipart and the hockey logo that my son designed for the team:

Tomorrow more hockey cookies...

Hockey Skates

I made these hockey skate cookies for my son and his hockey team. I asked CopperGifts.com if they would please add 2 wheels to their roller skate cookie cutter for me and they did one better and made a whole new rollerblade cookie cutter! Yay! You can order your very own rollerblade/inline skate by clicking here. It is a nice large cookie cutter and very stable. I'm super happy with it!

 We missed hockey during the summer when my son was working full time. Now that school is in session, he is on a new team with many of his friends and some new guys too. When they were sitting in their dressing room after the game last weekend, they were trying to get to know each other and one of the guys said "well you definitely want Nick on your team, his mom makes the best cookies". Cute huh! I usually just make cookies for the play-off game, but with my new cookie cutter, I was very excited to try these out.

I made lots of other hockey cookies too, but I'm going to show them to you in bits since it is blasting hot here this week and I likely won't get much baking in. I'm really hoping to make some Giants baseball cookies though before our Giants team is out for the count...

Lemonade Cookies

Last night I made Lemonade Cookies for my In-Laws. For my birthday, they bought me a lemonade cookie cutter from eCrandal that I've had on my wish list for quite a while. So I was pretty excited to make them some lemonade cookies. I even added lemon extract to the icing which made them super yummy!

This was the new lemonade cookie cutter. For those of you that ship cookies, this would probably not hold up very well with the thin straw and the somewhat thin stem of the glass both being appendages that would likely break off in shipping. They are great for a family cookie though.

I also made these lemonade glasses out of a soda glass cookie cutter that I have.

and Pitchers of Sparkly Lemonade

I used my clip-art from Maree Truelove to draw this Lemonade Stand:

and Lemon Slices:

 and Lemon Wedges:

 and Lemons, yes they are really footballs ;-):

Hubby will like this set because there is quite a bit of sanding sugar on almost all of them. I hope you're baking something delicious and enjoying it! I'm off for a bike ride.

I bought the clip-art to make these cute cookie bags from MareeTruelove's Etsy Shop. Click on the picture below to go to her shop and get the clipart for you too.

Enjoy!

Heart Cookies For A Friend

My friend, Jean, asked if I would make cookies for her friend. She wanted a simple white heart with the word Friend on it. I decided to add sanding sugar around the heart to decorate it a bit more and I picked a really pretty font to write Friend on each cookie. I sized the font to about 3" and then I put it in my Kopykake to project the image onto the cookie for me to trace. I write really well, but it never seems to transfer onto the cookies as I would write on paper, so my Kopykake projector works perfectly for that use. I was really happy with how the writing came out. For those that have sent me messages asking, I used a #1 tip and I used Royal Icing for the writing. All the rest of the cookie is in a glaze icing except for the word Friend. I also decided to make a few small hearts with dots to go with the Friend heart cookies.

They made a nice gift.

I went on a fantastic bike ride today. 53 miles long and my friend and I pushed it as hard as we could just because I wanted my Garmin stats to show a fast pace. With about 7 miles left til I got back home, I checked the data and it said 46 miles with an average speed of 16.3 and a top speed of 42. I was excited to load the data up to my computer as soon as I got home. Still sweaty and desperate for a shower, I sat down at my computer to load the Garmin stats. 

Unfortunately my Garmin and I are not friends today. My Garmin says that I did NOT go for a bike ride today! I was so upset that I could cry! My legs are on fire from pushing fast and hard against the wind, but I have no data to load. Bummer huh. After each work-out, I load my data up to Garmin Connect and also to a company called Plus 3. On Plus 3, money is donated to the charity of my choice for EVERY work-out I do. Well, only if my Garmin has decided we did indeed work-out.... I can still hand-enter my stats for my charity, but it's only half the amount it would be if Garmin loaded it for me. 

Tomorrow when I feel better about it, I will come to the conclusion that God is telling me that the numbers don't matter or sharing my stats with my other cycling friends, it really doesn't matter. Today, however, I'm just bummed out. 

Rubber Duckie You're The One

You know the song from Sesame Street. Come on, sing along with me... 

Rubber Duckie, you're the one

you make bathtime lots of fun

Rubber Duckie I'm awfully fond of you

Now that school is back in session and my son's summer job has wrapped up, he is attending the last potluck of the season to say goodbye to his work buddies for the summer. Supposedly his manager has a thing for rubber duckies, so he asked if I would make rubber duckies for the potluck. Of course! These were really fun. I have two cute rubber duckie cookie cutters so I used both. I got the inspiration of adding spots to the duckies from A Dozen Eggs Bake Shoppe.

Here are some of the spotted duckies with one cookie cutter:

and here are duckies from a different cookie cutter without spots:

On both sets of rubber duckies, I outlined the duckie first and then filled with lots of colors:

then I left them to dry for a bit and I iced the rubber duckie wing separately and right away added sanding sugar to each wing for an extra pop effect. I have a bit of a fetish for sanding sugar I think ;-)

Then I bagged all the cookies for cute boy to take to his potluck:

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend! I went for a bike ride yesterday (finally) and got in a good 47-mile work-out. The ride was supposed to be a whole lot longer, but cute boy had a problem with his car and needed a bit of rescuing, so I had to alternate my ride plans a bit. Today I'm hoping to get some work caught up in my home office before heading off to a college fair. 

Please take a moment today to remember those heroes that gave their lives 10 years ago today.