Things I Love Fridays: Crayons

I’m starting a new series called “Things I Love Fridays.”  They’re going to be filled with things I love–a very simple concept.  Some of them will be related to the kitchen, some of them just random things I love.

So today’s “Things I Love Fridays” is about crayons, one of the indispensable things I use when decorating sugar cookies.  Chalk it up the OCD in me, but I cannot look at a blank cookie and expect to decorate it without doing my homework.  Blank canvases send me into a mild panic attack.  So, when I’m ready to decorate a cookie, I outline the stencil onto a sheet of paper.  I then get out my trusty crayons and “decorate” the cookie.  I jot down notes on colors I’ll need, techniques I’ll use, and variations I’ll try.  Sometimes they don’t turn out, and when this happens I put a big X in the design.  Sometimes I look on the computer for ideas and mesh some I see with some I have in my head.  And sometimes, my lovely design looks great on paper, but it’s a disaster on the cookie.  (But I love it when it’s the other way around!  Unfortunately, that doesn’t happened very often.)

Here are some pictures of the “before,” where I outlined the cookie stencil and colored it in, and the “after,” once the sugar cookie was all decorated.

This one was for Mother’s Day.

This was Easter.

And this one was Summer Bugs.

I keep all my designs and recipes in a manila folder.

This way, if I want to make the same cookie again, I have my image and my notes.  (You can tell I use these two sheets a lot!)

If you haven’t tried this method when you’re making sugar cookies, I suggest you do.  It’s amazing!  And you won’t stare a blank cookie, with icing in your hand, and think, “What the heck am I going to do with this one?”

And lastly, if there’s anything you love, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section and I will check it out.  And who knows, I might even write a post about it. xoxo