Recipe: Sugar Cookies

With Christmas just around the corner, it only seems appropriate to share our favourite sugar cookie recipe. I found the recipe over here and after making them for countless parties and holidays, I can say it is tried and true. These cookies never disappoint and are so soft and delicious. They truly converted me to loving sugar cookies, so much that I make sure to send most of them home with friends to avoid eating them all in one sitting. Here's what we do:

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter

1 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1 egg

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream soft butter and sugar in mixer until smooth. Add vanilla and egg. Mix. Combine flour and baking powder before adding to wet mixture. Combine wet and dry ingredients and mix until stiff, then remove from mixer and finish kneading by hand. Dough does not need to be chilled (however it can be if you need to make it in advance). Roll to desired thickness, cut and bake for 6-8 minutes depending on the oven. Let cool and frost with royal icing. 

Tip for royal icing: I use two egg whites when I make my icing and the juice of one fresh lemon. In order to get the consistency I want, I slowly add water and stir after the initial mixing is done. Separate into bowls, add food color and pour into a container that has a screw on tip. I prefer the wide mouth Wilton ones from Michael's. Different tip sizes will allow you to alter your details on your cookies. Tooth picks are also very helpful for moving icing where you want it to go. Last thing, patience! Decorating cookies is not for the impatient.

Our Halloween Party

We love celebrating holidays and we love celebrating them with friends even more. The biggest perk to being back in Calgary (aside from universal health care) is our friend group that has grown over the years. I love creating memories with so many other amazing Mama's going through the same fun, tantrum-filled, wild stage of life that we're in. Today we embraced pure chaos, celebrating Halloween with costumes, treats, music, a mini parade, games and story time. I realized for the first time in my Mom life, I hosted a planned playdate at my own house. It was great!

On the decoration front, I can't say enough about Meri Meri Party supplies. I found plates from her collection at Homesense (my replacement for Target) and my party planning took off from there. I can't even handle the string hair on the witch. So cute. I would also like to say I wish paper bats were a standard home decoration because I am loving them all over my house. Thank you Dollar Store for all the tacky but sort of awesome Halloween decor.

The girls shared in the same happiness I felt having friends all around them. I kept finding Sophia running off to her bedroom to hide with her friends and me, chasing behind her saying "keep the door open" and "come back downstairs." Dreading the teenage years already. Lucy played with everyone and when she wasn't playing she was changing her dress multiple times or had her hand in the bowl of cheetos. Classic Lu. Isla took part in the unicorn club and then promptly cuddled into another Mom, hinting that she was ready for a nap. I have no idea how she did it but she slept through a good majority of the party. As for me, I really liked all the hugs, catching up, playing with my friends littles and making sure they felt happy in our home. We've been calling this house our happy red house since we got here and that it is. Here's to trying to make all the littles love me and more happy days ahead!

Sophia's Unicorn Party

She dreamed it herself and we brought it to life. Sophia talks about her birthday party year round. Her fifth birthday party will probably be "frozen fever" and her sixth birthday, horses she says. It was a proud day when she sat down next to me on the couch back in the spring to start planning her fourth birthday, unicorns. We browsed through pinterest, googled party ideas and every time we saw something unicorn-related in the months to come she would say "that would be good for my birthday party." It wasn't anything fancy but she was so happy with how everything came together. Of course, as her Mom I added a few extra touches to make it the perfect day and when she fell asleep within seconds at bedtime I knew it was a success. 

Decorations: our main decoration inspiration stemmed from the Meri Meri unicorn balloon I searched long and hard to find. I love that dear balloon. Our plates, napkins and straws all came from Target. We teamed up with the awesome company Glam Fete to create a custom color tassel banner which really brought everything together once set up. I loved the way we could tie our colors together in that beautiful rainbow to make everything pop. They are truly the unicorn of tassels over there, simply magical! All balloons came from Party City

Food: we did our best to make our food friendly to everyone, including those guests with celiac disease. We divided the table by gluten-free on the left of the cake and everything else on the right. If it isn't obvious, we made the cake (a pinterest fail) but in my defence we ran out of time to give it the love it needed. It served it's purpose and then we totally threw it out after the party. Cupcakes came from a local shop called Cake Babes. Doughnuts were the unicorn from our favorite donut shop Vandal Doughnuts. Everything else was homemade from my sugar cookies, Mom's rice krispie treats, puppy chow, marshmallow ice cream cones, fruit and veggie trays and my sister-in-law's delicious chocolate silk pie. Yum! I loved the way our drink cans also tied into the color scheme. I'll admit, I bought them based on color and not flavor but the cucumber mint turned out to be delicious.

Activities: when everyone arrived we started the party by playing a couple games. Sophia loves duck duck goose and what time is it Mr. Wolf? We changed them to go with our theme, starting off with horse horse unicorn followed by what time is it Mrs Unicorn? The clapping, laughter and excitement was through the roof during these games. The adults quite possibly got more into it than anyone else. When we finished the games we enjoyed all the treats, opened gifts and then sang happy birthday for Sophia to blow out her candles. She was very disappointed we put a sparkler on her cake at first. We sang twice solely so she could have her wish-making-candle-blowing moment

Sophia was so lucky to be surrounded by a group of people who absolutely adore her. She had the best day and we're so grateful for everyone who contributed to making this day all that it was. I hope she continues to celebrate big as the years go by and that she always knows how amazing she is. There will never be a curly haired girl quite like her.