Tangled

FOUR DAYS!!! That's right - 4 days until the Disney Princess Half Marathon!! I have been doing a lot to prepare for the race - listening to the Tangled soundtrack on repeat, watching the movie a few times, and diligently working on my costume. Oh yeah, I guess I've been running too... which usually ends up with me feeling like this:

Anyways, I'm excited to have it all done and finally be in Disney. Look forward to posts next week about how the race went (amazing I'm sure!), my costume, and much, much more!! Until then - let's all dance around like pretty pretty princesses!!

Valentine's Sweets

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!! As I said yesterday, Megan came over on Monday night to bake. We only got half of what we wanted done.

The Pretzel treats are by far the EASIEST. So quick to make! You lay out square pretzels and place a chocolate on top. (A lot of people use Hershey's Kisses, we used Wilton's melting chocolate wafers.)

I found dark chocolate raspberry flavored wafers at Michaels so I mixed those in too. We were cooking brownies at the same time so just put the pretzel chocolates in the oven for about 60 seconds or until the chocolate looked melty then placed a Valentine's M&M on top of each one.

Next we melted Wilton colored chocolate wafers (white and pink) in zip lock bags, cut off a tip and piped it on top of the pretzels. So cute and only takes about 10 minutes to make!

The brownies were a little more difficult. Our first batch didn't want to come out of the pan. (Even though I sprayed it with cooking spray!)

We used the same heart shaped cookie cutters from the sugar cookies to cut out heart brownies. I quickly realized that we weren't going to get a ton of brownies from this mix - and then we got even less when the brownies stuck to the pan.

I got a little smarter with the second batch and used the ever-trusty Wilton Cake Release to grease the pan and the brownies slid out perfectly.

There is so much scrap brownie when you're cutting out hearts... Cook's Treat!!

The lastly there's the sugar cookies. My old stand-by! Megan and I ran out of time to frost them on Monday so I did it last night while catching up on Downton. Sidenote: if you are also watching Downton, you HAVE to read the Facebook Recap. It's written as if the whole episode took place on Facebook and is HILARIOUS. Back to the cookies - The two designs I did weren't very intricate but still look great. It didn't take too long to do which was nice. And of course I sprinkled Disco-dust all over them. What's Valentine's Day with out a little SPARKLE??

Nerdy Valentines

I wanted to hand-make valentines again this year - but time was not on my side. I did manage to get a baking night in with my friend Megan (look for that post tomorrow!). Geek & Sundry posted some amazing LOTR valentines on Facebook yesterday. I should have printed them out and sent them around!!

I mean - aren't the BRILLIANT!?!?! Then I searched the internets for my favorite Doctor Who valentines and found a few gems. 

Seriously - next year everyone will be getting valentines themed around all of my favorite movies/TV shows printed out on cardstock. Man I love the internet.

Friday Musings #30

It's FRIDAY!!! WOOHOOOOOO. Time to break it down. I'm heading to my parents house for the weekend to catch up on some TV with my mom and shop at Wal-mart. Yay cheap things! I need to get a bunch of yarn to make a Rapunzel braid for the Disney Princess Half. Otherwise I think I pretty much have my costume together! 16 days to go!

Drawing Cookies

I've mentioned Reddit Gift Exchanges in past posts. 2012 was the first year I participated and boy did I participate! (I did the Book, Doctor Who, Halloween, and Secret Santa Exchanges). Of course I made cookies for my secret santa! I feel like Reddit gift exchanges are all about the right amount of non-creepy stalking. You get your match and then go through all of their Reddit posts, and Google them to figure out the kinds of things they like. I decided to make cookies and draw pictures on them of my secret santa-ee's interests. 

I used Wilton's FoodWriter markers to draw on iced sugar cookies. Unfortunately I only had black, green, orange, pink and purple, so kinda limited what I could draw. Next time I do this I will definitely buy more colors! I also used edible Christmas decals on some of them. I'm not sure how they taste, but they sure are pretty! 

I think my favorite part about the cookies was the packaging. I took a cleaned out Pringles can and made my own label to put over top. The cookies fit in perfectly! I also added the recipe for the cookies on the back. 

If you'd like to participate in any of the Reddit exchanges, sign ups are going on now for a book exchange, a tea and coffee exchange, snacks exchange, hats and scarves exchange, socks exchange, and Pokemon exchange. It's SO FUN. More pictures of the cookies after the jump!