How-To: Cookie Sandwiches

This year was the first year my daughter had to bring Valentines to school for Valentine's Day, so we wanted to go all out. (Ok, I wanted to go all out. She just wanted cookies.) Here's how we did it!

First you need:

Rolled sugar cookies

 Make sure you use ROLLED sugar cookies, with a ROLLED COOKIE recipe. If the recipe has the word "dropped" in it, or has "spoon onto a baking sheet" in the directions, then they're NOT rolled cookies. Only rolled sugar cookies will keep their shape and not spread while baking. If you're doing this around Christmas time, you can use gingerbread instead. Here's the recipe I use for sugar cookies --> Rolled Sugar Cookies

Colored nonpareils

 I suppose you could use jimmies, but I feel these stick better. I used red, white, and pink for the holiday. Add a little less than half of the container to a bowl for easy application.

Buttercream

I use 1/2 C of butter and 1/2 C of shortening creamed with a splash of vanilla, then I add 2 lbs. (more or less depending on taste/texture preference) of powdered sugar one cup at a time, and then I add approximately 2 tablespoons of cream and mixed it for another ten minutes or so. You can use any other kind of flavor you want, just cut the vanilla in half and add a different flavor to make up for the loss. You can also color the buttercream by adding gel food color. If you want chocolate buttercream, replace approximately half a cup of powdered sugar with cocoa powder. Add the buttercream to a piping bag and cut the tip off for a pretty big opening. I used a large round piping tip, but it's really not necessary.

Now just lay out some cookies by twos:

And pipe some buttercream about 1/4 of an inch thick onto half of the cookies:

Squish the bare cookies onto the buttercreamed cookies, making sure to have some buttercream protruding out so the sprinkles can stick. Now just roll the sides in the sprinkles and repeat with all of your cookies.

Now feast!

DIY Jean Skirt

I'm always looking for ways to reuse things, especially clothes. One of my daughter's pairs of jeans started falling apart at the bottom of the legs, but I didn't want to completely trash the jeans, and although I readily donate clothes all the time, I don't want to donate jeans that were falling apart. So I searched Pinterest for ideas and ran across this:

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/572168327629563198/

 I loved the look, and I figured that I could recreate this pretty easily.

I went to the fabric store and picked up a remnant that measured approximately 44 inches in length. Choose a length that is just about double the measurement of the jeans at the location of the cut, plus a few inches. The height didn't matter much since I could hem it up as much as I wanted.

So obviously you need a pair of jeans (Goodwill is always a good place to get some without sacrificing your own jeans), the fabric (I chose one that wouldn't fray much), thread, a strong needle, fabric scissors, and some fray stop if you have fabric that will fray.

First cut the jeans right above the legs straight across. You can use the fray stop on the bottom if they come apart easily, or hem them.

Next, take your fabric and hem it up as much as you need it. I put it up to my daughter and marked it where it touched the floor, which was about four inches from the bottom.

Now you will need to measure around the bottom of the cut jeans to figure out how much to bunch the fabric. This measurement will differ from the hip measurement. For example, my daughters hips measure at 21", and the bottom of the jeans measure at 24".

Next, do a straight stitch across the top of the fabric approximately 3/4" down from the top. Be sure to fasten the end tightly, or else it will come apart while bunching. After stitching, bunch the fabric as much as it takes to get the desired length.

 Secure the other end so the bunching will stay. Make sure you bunch the fabric evenly. You could even do this in sections for more even bunching, but I don't have that kind of patience.

 Next, pin the fabric to the jeans. I placed the stitching approximately 1/2" up on the jeans. Back-stitch all the way around the skirt, with relatively tight stitching.

I then did a very tight straight stitch down the seam because I did not have enough seam allowance to sew the two wrong sides together. Do whatever stitch is best for your fabric.

Fray stop any edges that would fray, let it dry, then gently wash it. That's it! Thanks to the jeans already being done, the rest of the skirt is pretty easy. If you have a sewing machine, I'm sure it'd be a lot quicker, and the actual stitching would be sturdier. I hand-sew for now, since my machine is back in Illinois and I'm currently in Arizona. Anyway, I hope this was helpful, and feel free to ask any questions in the comments. I'm sure I was pretty vague in my tutorial. :)