Monday, October 11, 2010

Cookies, Crayon rolls and Couponing

Boy did I get some creative juices flowing this weekend! After going to the Creative Hearts craft fair at Open Door church, I was newly inspired to break out my dear, dusty sewing machine. I had the perfect project in mind for a sweet little girl's 6th birthday-a "crayon roll." :-) Both fun and functional-and not to mention outrageously adorable-the crayon roll was a great sewing project for me  and one I will definitely do again. Talk about an exercise in sewing straight lines! I used the instructions found here: http://www.skiptomylou.org/2007/04/25/on-a-roll/

The finished product:
On a side note, I can't say enough how much I love Joann Fabrics! I could spend forever getting lost in their colorful aisles, but since I had the baby and hubby in tow, we made it out without a major hit to the clock and check card, haha. Thank goodness Joann neighbors one of our favorite Raleigh restaurants-it's wonderful husband bait!

On Saturday I attended a Smart Shopper Couponing class courtesy of WRAL studios here in Raleigh, and let's just say my head is still spinning. The workshop was incredibly helpful and I'm SO excited to use these techniques in our household. Plus, the speaker was really entertaining and held my attention the entire time, never missing a quick witted beat and keeping my pen at a steady pace with oogles of budget saving tips and tricks. This is another post entirely, and I will hopefully get to posting it soon with the fruits of my clipping-watch out Lowes Food, I am armed, organized and ready to do some damage!

Unfortunately, my culinary endeavors were less successful(though I did find a super deal on flour). For the past two weeks I've been dreaming of beautiful fall sugar cookies. But not just any sugar cookies-I was exicted to explore the world of royal and glace icing to pair with my sweet treats. You know the kind-the kind of icing that's shiny and stays perfectly put on top of the cookie, that makes your cookie creations look like patterned peices of stain glass art and are stackable to boot. Sort of like this:
Well, let's just say that my first time around the block with this new recipe was, well, a disaster. If you've ever seen Nickelodeons "goo," you can imagine the messy splatter that painted my cookies, wax paper, spoons, bowel and counter tops. Neat it was not. Even the color was less than best...my pumpkin orange turned into sort of a melon/salmon color, which is to say it looked sort of pukey. :-/

Looking at my true trial and error of a batch, I knew without a doubt that these cookies would not be going to work with my husband the next day as planned haha! O well...at least design aside, the cookies did TASTE pretty amazing. And the learning experience really is a necessary one-after realizing my mistakes made, I'm almost positive I can make it much neater next time. Practice does make better, and I'm excited to whip out this recipe again with much more success come Christmas time.

As you can imagine, all of this craftyness is sure to leave a trail. I'm off now to vacum stray threads, wash cookie sheets and clean counters!

3 comments:

Hubby said...

husband bait...I'm offended and yet somehow happy...cuz at least I get my Pei Wei

Shayna said...

The crayon roll is adorable!!! And I'm looking forward to hearing more about your couponing and seeing some pictures of your super pretty holiday cookies!! :)

Lori said...

We love our crayon roll. It took me a few tries to get my cookie icing perfected. No worries!