Valentine's Fish Cookies???

I have some cookies to share from Valentine's day that probably won't be that popular. They're fish. Large mouth bass to be specific. I wasn't going to share them because they have a few issues, but my sister told me that I should share my C- cookies too. I'll tell you why they only get a C- in a second but first I must explain why I know what a large mouth bass is. My husband is a fisherman (but firefighter/paramedic as profession.) Not an occasional, one pole kind of guy. He's one of those men that has two boats, locaters, over 20 rods, and 5 trillion lures. I do like to keep count, just in case I'd like a few new cookie cutters or something. He even has some kind of device that transmits a sound through the water to trick the fish into thinking that it's time to feed. I like to tease him and call that cheating, but I guess a lure is a lure. We like to go camping up north in Boulder Junction, WI and it is his favorite place to fish. So much so that he doesn't mind going up by himself for weeks at a time with no one to talk to except for his fish. So what kind of cookies do I make him for Valentine's day....?
 Even though I know what a large mouth bass looks like I still googled a picture and took some inspiration from it. I started by using icing with a Wilton rose pink base and added the Americolor forest green, and a little black. I ended up with sage tones of green to my liking. Normally I would recommend starting with the base color you intend the icing to end up as (green), but I knew that the rose pink icing I had already had on hand would work well to create the green I wanted. My grade for my cookies always drops a bit when I realize that the consistency of my icing is off. This matters a lot, especially for piping detail lines. This sounds awful to say, but it was late, it was for my husband, and I didn't decide to redo the icing. I can say this because I know that he does not care if the fins of these fish have blobs on them. He just cares that they are fish and that they are chocolate. The silver sanding sugar added a nice little touch and they made the tell tale markings of this fish more prominent. The recipe is from Smitten Kitten. They are pretty moist for a cut out cookie and have a very chocolatey brownie flavor. Maybe I should have made some tartar sauce for dipping.....

 Do you love this cute little card? Now, I do have a Cricut machine, but I decided to make this card the old-fashioned way. Scissors and glue. I hung around in the third grade a little bit longer and used some cursive writing. I can't remember the last time I wrote in cursive.

 
  I cut out the center heart twice, and part way to make it a pop out card. It turned out cute. A pop out card isn't that hard to do and you'll look like you spent quite some time working on it. You'll find quite a few tutorials online if you search. The word love is floating out of the chimney on the front of the card and the interior of the card says "....is how we fill our home." I know, I can hear the "aawwwww" from here.

Valentine's Day Dedication

Happy Valentine's Day! I want to dedicate this short post to my husband's grandmother. Marilyn Yvonne Marander is a one of a kind grandma. I know I took my Grandma Rodbro for granted and didn't spend enough time with her. It makes me cherish John's grandparents that much more. Grandma Marander was one spunky lady (I should probably say "still is") but I am speaking specifically about her dating and engagement history. Grandma and Grandpa Marander have been married 55+ years. They got engaged after their first date! Did you read that? Their first date!!! She was actually engaged to someone else when she accepted Grandpa's proposal. They were obviously meant to be. It is their example of love that has probably shaped the way that my husband's family views marriage. She has never had a driver's license because Grandpa takes her everywhere she needs to go. Grandpa has never needed to cook because Grandma loves to take care of him in that way. While a lot of modern day families do not follow these traditional roles, I admire the ease that they display every day in their marriage. The following are a few pictures of the cookies that I made and sent to her a week or so back. The angels are just because she loves them, and I was just jumping to make heart cookies. I took some inspirations from the readers of Sweet Sugarbelle in her post in which she asked her readers to share their valentine's day cookies. I thought the lace cookies were really neat, I recreated them so that I could practice that awesome technique. Next time I'll have to make it my own! I used Americolor's super red and Wilton's rose pink. Someday I'll have to create a post just about dying frosting red. I hate it - for several reasons. I'm so proud of my cut out hearts, they add a nice little touch. Just for Grandma! Here she is - martini in hand! I can think of a much better picture of Grandma and Grandpa of which my in-laws have, but it is 9:00 and I should get back to MY Valentine's day! Thanks again for reading. Wishing you a lot of love today!

Amelie's 1st Birthday

Today is our baby girl Amelie's first birthday. What a fun year this has been. I remember my mom telling me that it takes about 3 months for a couple to adjust to having a new baby and I'll have to agree with that. The first couple weeks just felt ridiculous. I had a spinal headache, severe shoulder and back pain, a sinus infection, healing from the c-section, us both learning to breast feed. But I remember feeling dutiful and very thankful for our health. It might have taken me a few weeks to feel a strong bond with her, but now I feel naked if she's not with me (somedays I might describe that feeling as "free".)
It has been so fun watching her change, learn, and grow this first year from her first chubby cheeked smile, to her plowing along with her doggie push toy. We are very blessed to have such a HAPPY baby!
I'm going to add a few pictures from her birthday party a few days ago. I made a sour cream vanilla 16" heart cake covered in swirl roses for our guests. It ended up weighing 20 pounds! Amelie had a some what healthy, low(er) in sugar blueberry, banana cake that I covered in cream cheese frosting. I'm not too proud of the addition of the pink frosting because of the food coloring, but it was such a small amount.
I pray for another wonderful year to bless our sweet, precious girl!

Vanilla sour cream cake. Swirl roses made with the Wilton 1M tip. In case you didn't know, this is how you can cover a cake with the least amount of effort and still have it look fabulous. I panicked when it came to the letters but I didn't chicken out. I still need a bit of practice in that area. I made the hearts out of royal icing ahead of time.

This dress came from a 1950's party dress pattern that I found on etsy. I sent it and some fabric to my sister Bev in Georgia and she sewed it for us. The pattern came without instructions and she just figured it out on her own. Didn't it turn out so cute?

The sweets table.

Some cake smashing pics.....

I guess she is kind of a neat eater.

Some decor.....

Some birthday party fun.....

Thank you for reading my first blog post! I'm sure quite a few of these will be about Amelie ;-)