{At Home} Progress, Or Lack Thereof...

So progress has stalled on the powder room and the upstairs bathrooms. We bought a new faucet for the powder room but still need to buy new light fixtures! Also, I started to clean out my closets but that has come to a complete halt since I was keeping everything that still fits, it's just that I forgot I owned half of it, so I need to reassess before continuing. And I still need to figure out what to fill the frames with.

Basically, fail all around.

I was going to post some photos of a little Valentine's related craft I did a few years ago, but I still haven't taken photos of it even though I've been meaning to for the past 3 months...

Then I decided I would post photos of the sugar cookies I made last year for friends and co-workers, but apparently those photos are only on my external hard drive so instead, here's the photo that my friend Mandie took of the cookies she got. It was my first time (first time in recent history anyway) decorating with royal icing and it took me FOREVER.

Then I was going to start putting together my post for the Liebster Award that Beatrice from The Crafty Bee so kindly passed on to me... But that would mean I would have to have my crap together! Which I do not.

Hopefully I'll have it up this weekend/early next week?!?!?
I flew in late Sunday night thanks to the usual delays at LaGuardia Airport (I swear I have spent more time there these past 5 years than I have at Toronto's Pearson Airport my entire life) and I'm working 3 of the next 4 nights at my part-time gig so I took last night to just veg after a busy weekend.

In any case,

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Remember to check out today's Google Doodle! It's a cute animation featuring Tony Bennett's "Cold, Cold Heart". I love when they have Doodles.

{Eat} Winter Holiday Treats

Happy 2012!!

I finally had some time during the holidays to bake even though it was already past Christmas. They ended up being for friends only anyway since most of the office was gone between Christmas and New Years Eve. I was the sucker who stayed behind, but I'm taking three days off this week to head off to NYC, so it's all good!

I baked two batches of sugar cookies which yielded about 70 2-2.5" cookies, but next time I need to either bake three batches, or somehow alter my icing recipe to make less. I was trying to use as much icing as possible when decorating, but I still had a lot left over.

 A sampling of the designs I did. It gets a little repetitive always doing the same few designs...

 My progress after night one of decorating.

 Snowflakes.

 Personalized cookies!

 Christmas trees.

I call the right one "Rudolph's nose" and the two on the left "Rudolph blinking in a blizzard", as inspired by Calvin and Hobbes' "Polar bear blinking in a blizzard", seen below.

I hope the cookies were good (I only tried one iced one but I ate a lot of plain ones) and that everyone had a wonderful holiday!

{Eat} Skeleton Men

Happy Halloween!

Both the chocolate cut-out cookies (minus espresso powder) and royal icing recipes via Bake at 350.

No closeups because the icing was a little too thick so it didn't go on nicely at all. Cramped hands are no fun.

I started to run out of time (had to rush to a concert!) and steam so I just swirled the icing on the last few men.

Our Best Bites' are way cuter!