Lovin' from the oven!

To celebrate Valentine's day I broke out my trusty cookie press and made two batches of my famous butter cookies.   This is seriously the easiest cookie recipe I've ever come across.  It's so simple that people never believe me when I tell them it is only three ingredients.  Flour, butter, and a dry cake mix.  That's it!  I always make lots of these at Christmas time and try to make others throughout the year to make use of the little shape discs that never get used.   Here's the cast of characters for this sinfully simple recipe:

For each batch, I soften one pound of butter (that's right, nothing says lovin' like a pound of butter!) in the microwave for a minute and a half.  Then mix in 2 and 3/4 cups of flour and one dry cake mix.  This is where you can get all creative.  I usually use a white cake mix for the standard cookie, but the strawberry cake mix makes very yummy valentine treats.  You can use whatever flavor you prefer, or you can add food coloring to the dough that you make with the white mix.  For today's recipe, I made one batch with strawberry and one with white. 

Once all of the ingredients are incorporated, fill a cookie press and start pressing out these buttery blobs of goodness.   For those who don't know, a cookie press is much like a caulking gun, but filled with dough, and presses out shapes through little discs.  I think my Pampered Chef press came with 16 different shape discs. I much prefer this method of getting shaped cookies, since I hate to roll out dough for cut-out cookies.  And these cookies are great because you don't have to fuss with icing.  Before you put them in the oven, you can add sprinkles or jimmies.  This where my little guys like to help.  They say there can never be too many sprinkles!

Then you bake them in a 350* oven for 10-12 minutes.  Since the butter content is so high, these little guys burn very easily, so make sure to pull them out before the edges get brown.  Let them cool on the cookie sheet for 5-10 minutes so they don't break when you try to remove them.  Or if you want a good excuse to sample a few, go ahead and remove them and eat the ones that break.  It depends on what shape you're using, but one batch of this heart shape made 95 cookies.  That's a whole lot of lovin'!  We boxed up a mixture of the pink and white ones for the boys' teachers and I had plenty extras so that hubby and I can share with co-workers tomorrow! 

Weekly Challenge #29

I can't believe we are already on week #29 of the Scrapbook Steals sketches!  I must say that I look forward to them every week and was super excited to see my scrappy friend Brenda with the honor of "Guest Sketcher"!  She did a great job.  So great that I can't do the sketch justice.  But here's what I settled on:

I used some silly pics that were taken one night when Caleb decided to give himself a "makeover".  He finished his bath and we heard him in the bathroom just cracking himself up.  I had to go see what he was up to.  He had combed spikes in his hair and thought he was just the coolest thing!  So even though I'm not thrilled with this layout, it still makes me smile because it bring back great memories of an ordinary night.  And that is what scrapbooking is all about...memories and the joy they bring! 

Sketchy Thursdays challenge

Since I don't give two hoots about the teams playing in this year's Super Bowl, I decided to use this time to complete the Sketchy Thursday challenge for this week.  The 2.3 sketch is supposed to be inspired by this sketch:

I used some papers from my Fancy Pants stash and found some great pics of Caleb on the playground.  I cut out the argyle strip on the Cricut and added a homemade denim flower and a little bit o' bling.  Thanks for looking!

Weekly Challenge #28

What a great day for a snow day!  And perfect timing that it happens to be Wednesday, when the latest Scrapbook Steals mid-week mojo challenge is revealed.  This week's sketch was a one page layout, but I have too many pics to limit myself to one page, so I modified it to fit lots of pics on two pages.  I used my Rusted Sun collection from Fancy Pants, which almost made me forget we have a blizzard outside.  I cut out the clothes and flip flops from a piece of patterned paper and made my own clothesline with marker.  And how could I resist doing a little stitching with the Sew Easy?!  I made waves and stitched them with varigated blue floss.  I added a little spray ink around the edges, but not sure I like how it made my papers buckle.  I can't believe this is my 28th challenge.  When we complete 30, the amazing gals at Scrapbook Steals are promising a chance at a big prize.  I can't wait!

Weekly Challenge #27

I almost ran out of time to complete this week's Scrapbook Steals sketch.  But I finally made time today and came up with this.  I'm not thrilled with my layout, but I really love this photo I snapped when we were hiking at Potato Creek.  I made my own flower by stitching along a strip of denim and gathering it into a circle, stitching the edges together.  I inked the edges and added a button to finish it off.  Thanks for looking!

Sketchy Thursdays challenge

I was determined to complete this week's 1.20 challenge for Sketchy Thursdays and stayed up late to get 'er done.  For this layout, I broke out my Sew Easy stitch piercer to stitch around the red patterned paper.  I distressed and inked cardstock and craft paper and popped my center picture with pop dots.  My favorite part of the whole page is the "friend" tag that I created with a piece of hubby's old jeans and some rub on letters.  I punched a hole thru the denim tag and added an eyelet, fringed the bottom of the denim, and tied it on with twine.  Thanks for looking!

Weekly Challenge #26

I had lots of options for this week's Scrapbook Steals sketch, but finally settled on pics of my silly Caleb baking with Grandma.  I love that he gets into stuff like this.  My mom is an amazing baker and started including me in the kitchen at a very young age and  I love that she is now sharing her talents with my kiddos.  She lives 6 hours away from us, so we don't get to see her nearly enough.   The boys always look forward to visits from Grandma because they know they'll get to help make treats.  She is  making wonderful memories with my boys and I was lucky to capture a few pics!