Learn how to make some easy moon and star decorated sugar cookies with this royal icing cookie decorating tutorial!!  When I was in college, I was a whitewater rafting guide in a fairly remote part of Wyoming. The nights were warm with just a little edge of cool wind coming through. And it was dark. So so dark without a moon. You could actually see the Milky Way.  And it seemed like I would always be 23 years old. 

Use this icing color palette and the formulas to make icing for your next tropical jungle cookie project!!  I used Chefmaster brand food coloring for all of these formulas. If you're not sure what the "parts" mean, or how to use these formulas, check out THIS POST for detailed step-by-step photos! See how I made the parrot cookies HERE!! See more of my color palettes and formulas HERE!  Get the cutters: parrot , flower , heart leaf , teardrop leaf , and small heart.

Learn how to make some brightly colored parrot decorated sugar cookies with this royal icing cookie decorating tutorial!!  I've decided that I'm going to stop using the word "homeschooling" to describe what is currently happening in my home. I think it's giving homeschooling a bad reputation. " Checking my email 71 times a day and rapid fire negotiating with my four children simultaneously while trying to also download new learning apps and find lost logins before they realize we are 27 minutes past our scheduled time for their nutritious afternoon snack and everyone devolves into an exploding slush of anger and resentment " ...just seems a little long though.

Use this icing color palette and the formulas to make icing for your next tropical jungle cookie project!! I used Chefmaster brand food coloring for all of these formulas. If you're not sure what the "parts" mean, or how to use these formulas, check out THIS POST for detailed step-by-step photos! When I make different colors with the same ratios (like the pinks above), I usually make the darkest color first. Then I add some of the darker colored icing into a bowl of fresh white icing to make a lighter version of the same icing. See more of my color palettes and formulas HERE ! Grab the cutters: Toucan , Flamingo , Chameleon , Parrot (coming soon), Cloud , Bow, Tropical Leaf , Long Leaf , Pineapple ,  Sun , Long Petal Flower , Wonky Petal Flower , and Nancy Plaque . 

Learn how to make some tropical Santa decorated sugar cookies with this royal icing cookie decorating tutorial!!   If blogs had Christmas specials...this would be it. It would start with a dark, snowy night that cuts inside to a warm kitchen where a smartly dressed female actor (who is clearly just pretending to be me...because let's be honest, I've never been smartly dressed in my life...) is patiently and sweetly decorating Christmas cookies with her adorably well-behaved children. (More creative license...you can be sure of that. 😂😂) One of those sweet little angel faces looks up and asks, "Mommy, was our coat closet always full of cookie cutters?" The clearly-has-it-all-together-mother-impersonators stares off into the middle distance and says, "Let me tell you a story..."

There is something about seeing the sun again for the first time in ages that makes me look around my house and think, "Oh my gosh!! Do you even OWN a vacuum or Windex or ANYTHING AT ALL that is remotely related to cleaning and organizing you cavewoman??!!" And then I say to myself, "Gah! You know I do. I hid it under that mountain of laundry so I didn't feel guilty staring at it all the time."

You guys. I wish you could all be right here in my living room THIS VERY SECOND!!!!! I **NEED** someone else to be hearing this!!! My little very-nearly-three-but-totally-the-boss-thank-you-very-much Little P is playing the piano and singing for me. I'm not sure if you've heard the song before, but it goes a little something like this --

Real talk here. I love decorating cookies. I love making that gorgeous chocolate dough. And I love eating it while pretending that it's for "quality control." I love the way my house smells while they are baking. I love feeling like a mad scientist when I mix up my colors. And the way the final detail makes an entire cookie suddenly RIGHT. But more than anything... I love the people that I meet because of decorating cookies. It's a big old world out there. And one of my very first and dearest friends from the beginning of my days of cookie decorating who basically started this cookie decorating revolution has ONCE AGAIN blown that world wide open by starting an innovative, adorable, and incredibly functional line of cookie decorating tools and cutters. But I can't tell you who she is. Just kidding! You already know! It's Callye from Sweet Sugarbelle! Her products debuted earlier this spring for online purchasing. And just last week -- they arrived ...

I forget lots of things. Like the carton of eggs in the grocery bag I left at the bottom of the stairs all day because I thought there were only pretzels in the bag. Or the load of laundry I put in the washer 3 days ago. (Except now, I'm just pretending that I forgot about it because actually, I'm a little afraid that the laundry monsters are growing in my forgotten laundry. And as soon as I open the lid they are going to jump out and eat me. And my ice cream.)  One time last year, I forgot that my children didn't have school on a Friday. And totally got them up and ready and half way there before my neighbor mentioned that maybe we didn't need to do that. I forget to change my shirt after baking and before running to the grocery store. I forget where I've parked my car. Or that I didn't even drive in the first place. I've even forgotten about 2 dozen hand-cut baked cookies that needed decorating...for AN ENTIRE YEAR. But I did NOT forget th...

I almost cleaned my kitchen last week. For real. It very nearly happened. I got out the mop and everything...but I never made it past the pantry. A few shopping trips worth of canned food that I had saved to "put away later" stopped pretty much stole all my motivation. Seriously though, is there a person on the planet that still has energy to put away their groceries once they've driven to the store...walked around it 7 times because you keep forgetting everything and your list is entirely UNorganized...and you have to lift all that food onto the counter and then back into your cart...and then you had to find a bathroom because *someone* can't make it through the 4 1/2 minute drive home...and then when you finally make it back home, you have to carry all those bags of groceries inside and up some stairs while dodging children who apparently can't even carry themselves up those stairs after all that grocery store walking. I always try to carry all the bags ins...

I love clever. Like, even if it's WAY past bedtime and I just want my kids to finish putting their pajamas on and stop jumping around the house like dinosaurs ( Because for some reason they are convinced that dinosaurs jumped?! What kind of school are they even going to?!) and brush their teeth FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING GOOD and just go to bed before I lose my ever loving mind...if they get all clever and start reasoning through the pros and cons of a late night snack...I'll totally give in. Every time. I like when people use their brains. And even more, I love when that use of said brain results in a brilliant surprise. Like the Stencibelle stencils . When I first saw the STENCIBELLE line of stencils, I knew the world of stencils had changed forever. Have you guys seen her EDGE STENCILS ??!! I seriously cannot wrap my brain around how clever these are. And I simply could not pick a favorite. They just make so much sense! Like this grass and clouds stencil or se...

People keep asking me if I'm ready for my kids to go back to school yet. My answer is always, " Oh my gosh! Please stop talking about school like it's actually going to happen again!! " I absolutely LOVE having my kids home for the summer! The chaos...meh...I could do without that. But I love the FREEDOM of planning every second of our day, or really, not planning every second of our day. Look, I'm not saying my daughter never takes all of her clothes off, including her diaper, and then finger paints herself with mayo on the carpet. And it's not like my son learned how to start fires with a magnifying glass and got sent home from summer camp for starting horse...ummm...poo... on fire. And to be honest, the day my girls decided to start a salon and ended up painting the couch with finger nail polish and lotion wasn't my best day. Or the day my child asked me why my butt looks all "weirdy" -- also not my best day. But every other day...

I took my kids camping last week. Camping is basically a dirt nap sandwiched between two tornadoes. There's all the planning and food buying and the filling and the stuffing of bags with clothes that are actually all wrong for the weather that is coming for you, only you don't even know it because all seven weather channels that you checked said it would be warm and sunny. And you're up ridiculously late finishing the laundry so you have all those so very necessary perfect items and up early putting all the food in a cooler with a giant block of ice that is already started to join that great ocean in the sky and you somehow manage to corral all those little bodies into one singular vehicle only to have everyone wish they could be anywhere but that vehicle for the next 3 to a million hours or so. And then you get there and the kids explode out of the car like they've never breathed air before. Ever. In their entire lives because clearly you live on a submarine and...

Okay, so that whole, "walking until your legs fall off" thing...that's not really true, right? Because I got a Fitbit a few weeks ago and joined some crazy "challenge" where you try to walk more than steps than everyone else. And as it turns out.... I'm a wee bit competitive. And now my legs don't work anymore. They said they need a break. And lemonade. And maybe a new movie on Amazon. And I told them they could have the break and maybe the movie...but the lemonade is right out. And then my legs were all, "Who are YOU to judge us? It's not like you're actually making those cookies you were supposed to have started hours ago. We see your browser open to Pinterest." And then *I* said, "It's  Netflix." And then my legs stopped talking to me. And I can't decide if that's a good thing, because really...talking legs? That's just weird. But on the other hand...maybe they are secretly plotting my demise during...

If we're being completely honest here, my house is a mess 95% of the time. If you've ever come over and it doesn't look like a child's bedroom after you asked them to pack a bag for grandma's house...it's because my husband will be home in 15 minutes. Or because he just got home. Or because you came over for dinner and it's only been 15 minutes since you arrived. That's it. Those are the only occasions where you might possibly come to my house and see actual floor between the stuffed animals and the crafting supplies and the socks (OH. MY. GIDDY. AUNT. Is it *so* impossible to wear the EXACT SAME pair of socks for an entire day??!!)

Can we talk about paper for a minute? More specifically -- the pages of a book. I know I'm a blogger and this pretty much goes against everything internetty that ever was... but I just adore books. I like the weight of them. And the smooth smooth paper. And I like that things stay in the same place. If that one recipe you love and adore more than your first glitter nail polish is on the bottom of the left page...it's always going to be on the bottom of the left page. You can ACTUALLY book mark it and it will always be right where you left it. And you can flip back and forth between two pages for as long as you like. You don't have to click on something to make it bigger. It's already bigger. And it doesn't have to load. You don't have to charge it. And if you accidentally spill your drink on a book (who does that???!) ... it's probably still going to be okay. Maybe a little wrinkled or wavy...but still totally functional.   And in all of my love of b...

You guys know this is my favorite day of the month! I get to peruse my cousin's fantastic paper creation blog and then recreate one of them in sugar form. I actually made these awhile and I have been SAVING them for some reason that even I don't comprehend. And also I may have forgotten I had them for awhile. But here we are with some of the cutest, most adorablest sea creature cookies I've ever made. Which is not a surprise considering I used this CUTEST BEYOND WORDS crab card as my inspiration!!!! WHY did I not also make the flower?! (Because I'm just awful at flowers, that's why. But next time...Imma brave it anyway. It's just too cute.) 1. Bake yourself a crab shaped cookie. You can eat one of them if you want to. I won't tell. 2. Using thick black icing and a #2 tip, outline the entire cookie. For some reason, I thought it made sense to leave gaps for the eyes. But...it doesn't. Just outline the whole thing. Let the outline dry for ...

There was a time in my life that summers meant sailboats. Little tiny one person sailboats that I could carry all by myself....Sailboats I made out of spare parts and fiberglass....Catamaran sailboats that would fly practically sideways through the water...Big ol' sailboats with booms and giant genoa sails that you could sleep in for days. I taught people to sail and took people on sailing tours and I raced sailboats and very nearly won... and I never thought I would find something that made me that happy. And then, guess what? There are a MILLION fantastic things in this life! Like getting married and crazy kids and living in South Korea and whitewater rafting and rock climbing and making cookies and MAKING COOKIES WITH COOKIE FRIENDS!!! I just spent this weekend hanging out with cookie friends and filming some shows for McGoo U. And basically, I'm high on life right now. I wish I could share this week with all of YOU! But since I can't, I'm going to share saili...