Spring Flower Photographs

A bit of spring color from the park...

 And our garden.

Ginger Snap Pogens

Do you remember Ginger Snap Pogens?

When I was growing up in Southern California in the 70s and 80s, these were a delicious store-bought treat. They were thin, crisp, and spicy, and in the shape of animals with minimal detail, often just an eye poked into the dough.

I made these using this Pogens Gingersnaps Recipe with a few variations. I added 1/2 cup flour, chilled the dough, rolled it to 1/8" and cut shapes with cookie cutters.

I love the simplicity of these cookies.

These are even simpler! It was nice to take a break from fancy decorated cookies.

This project was a yummy trip down memory lane, and the results were very close to the cookies I remember.

Thanks to a fellow blogger, I was able to track down this Pogens brochure. I'd love to find a photo of the original cookies!

Baseball Birthday Cookies

Personalized Baseball Birthday Cookies

I'm happy with how these came out, although I was wishing for a Kopykake projector while I was decorating them!

Birthday Season

Early spring is a busy time in our family! All three of our birthdays are within 10 days of each other, so there is a lot of celebrating to be done. Easter often occurs in the same week and a half, sometimes falling on one of our birthdays.

An outing to celebrate Easter and my birthday.

We love wildflowers!

Yummy ice cream for my birthday dessert.

Gracie's birthday was next. I made these monogram cookies for her to share with her class. She chose the colors and design. To see more cookies, visit me over at Nina's Cookie Shop.

We had a party for her at a local park on a very windy day! I embellished the hat and made yummy pink cupcakes. It was a new recipe for me, Pink Lady Cake made with strawberries. Gracie chose pink icing and helped decorate the cupcakes with sprinkles.

The party had a garden theme, and this balloon flower was supposed to decorate the gazebo at the park. The wind interfered with the decorations, so it adorned our house instead. This tutorial from All Things Simple was very helpful!

The cute napkins are from Target, and I embellished a party store birthday hat with ribbon for the birthday girl. I made the flower cookies for party favors. You can see more flower cookies over at Nina's Cookie Shop.

Next came Art's birthday. Gracie and I made him a card and bundles of 50 things.

Gracie LOVES wrapping presents and picked out the paper and bow.  She also loves unwrapping presents!

We wanted a simple dinner that would finish well with apple pie for dessert. A DIY BAT (bacon, avocado & tomato sandwich) was perfect! I made mayonnaise from scratch for the first time. Thanks to this recipe from Alton Brown and these hints from Andrea the Kitchen Witch on using the KitchenAid mixer, it came out well.

Finally it was time for pie! I like to use a combination of apples; for this pie I used Lady Alice (which I just learned is a new variety) and Pink Lady apples. With a crumb topping and vanilla ice cream, it was a delicious finale to our birthday season!

Train Cookies

Train Cookie for a 3rd Birthday Celebration

I was inspired by the colors on these train cookies at Sweet Creations by Debbie. They were for a 3rd birthday, too! I also like her accent cookies.

I used a variation of these wheels on the Wilton cookie cutter packaging.

All packaged up and ready for the party!