12th Birthday Cookies!

My oven broke about 3ish weeks ago. It literally just quit working one day, no clue why. Of course, the fact that it was probably 20 years old didn't help (no idea how old...but it looks pretty ancient). Really, it was a blessing. It's old. It didn't bake evenly. It didn't tell me when it was preheated (I got an oven thermometer so I could at least tell from that). We've wanted to replace it since we got married. It's just hard to convince ourselves that it was worth spending that kind of money when it DID still work. So, it breaking was unfortunate, especially cause the bread I tried making when it went kaput on me never got made :( However It gave us the reason to actually get the new one we've been talking about getting for a year and a half now. We looked online, read reviews, talked to my mom, and finally picked one. Of course, we picked one that they didn't have in the store, so I've been waiting patiently (sometimes not so patient) for a new one to arrive. Well guess what???? It comes TOMORROW!!! YAY! I'm so excited. I'm sure I'll post a picture at some point.

I'm telling you this, because, well, I write about baking and an oven is a pretty important thing for a baker. AND, cause it went kaput just a couple days before I had to bake some cookies for a friend's daughter's 12th birthday! uh oh...what to do? Thankfully, it wasn't an issue at all cause I have a friend who lives like 2 min. away and I was able to go and use her oven. So I made my dough, rolled out my cookies, put them on cookie sheets and drove them over to her house. Then, I baked them and drove back. fun stuff. It totally worked out and the cookies were a ton of fun to do.

I was given only a few instructions. The birthday girl's favorite color was blue and she wanted some butterflies and flowers, specifically roses. I had gotten some fun birthday type cutters that I wanted to use, so I chose variety to add in along with the butterflies and roses.

Fun girly butterflies and flowers

A friend of mine recently asked me if I would make some cookies for the favors at her daughter's fifth birthday party. I was excited to help a friend out and a little girl's birthday sounded like a fun thing to create for. There was no real theme for the birthday other than cute and girly. The birthday girl likes pink and purple, so those were my color choices.

I decided to do fun little butterflies and flowers. I used a darker and lighter shade of both pink and purple and sprinkled a little pearl dust (aka, edible glitter) on top at the end to make them shimmer a bit. I am not a photographer by any means (as anyone could tell) and the purples all ended up looking blue in the pictures. They were actually a fun, bright purple, but you'll just have to imagine it.

I also made a special birthday cake cookie for the birthday girl.

I put the cookies in little treat bags and the birthday girl's mom added adorable little tags and ribbon to them. Aren't those tags so cute? (I blocked out part was the birthday girl's name. Here mom did not have strange purple blocks on the tags!)

butterfly cookies!

I ordered some new fun butterfly cookie cutters after deciding the one I had was a bit boring. Don't these just look fun?

In the same order, I also got the kitchenaid beaterblade that has the spatula-like edges so that it scrapes the sides of the bowl and the bottom as it beats. I love it! I spent so much less time scraping the bowl. It formed a lip of dough/icing above where the blade hits the bowl that I would have to scrape off, but that I could basically do while it was going. I think I'm going to end up being quite grateful that I made the decision to get it.

Alright, here are the butterfly cookies I made with my fun new cookie cutters.

The blue one in the upper left corner was inspired by AliBee's blue butterfly cookie that you can see here. My Green icing wasn't at the right consistency and I can totally tell. Seriously, getting the right consistency is really important and not easy.