I think if I actually did celebrate Valentine’s Day in real life, this would be my speed. I’d have to throw some sort of joke in after the “we go together like…” sentiment. Sheesh, my husband sure is one lucky man.

Oh yeah, by the way… for way more than you wanted to know about food coloring pens, edible writers, whatever you want to call them, and how to draw on marshmallows, click HERE.

Some more pairs:

needle and thread

leg warmers and aerobics

peanut butter and jelly

tissues and sleeves

salt and pepper

guitar and pick

Eiffel Tower and Fifi

birds and bees

coffee and donuts

pig tails and ink

puddles and boots

geeks and Star Trek

typewriters and White-Out

Mikey and Life

white wine and motherhood

Mr. Rogers and sweaters

Can you think of any more?

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Do you find it harder and harder to buy gifts for those in your life year after year? As we get older, we need less and less after years of accruing junk. And I’m in such a “no more clutter” phase (not successfully, mind you) that I almost cringe now when getting gifts.  (Sort of, please don’t stop buying me gifts, people in my life.)

That’s why cookies are the most perfect gift ever. They dry well enough to package all cute like. You can personalize them to reflect to the recipient that yes, you do indeed know them and thought about them. And you consume cookies, so no residual clutter.

This jar o’ bite size all-about-mom cookies is a handy little gift not just for mother’s day, but for anyone anytime. To make these, I prepared and chilled my cookie dough, cut out 1 1/2-inch circles, baked and let cool. I prepared my royal icing and tinted white. I piped an outline on the cookies, thinned the icing and flooded the centers. Then, I let the cookies dry very well, overnight at least, before drawing pictures with my handy dandy food pens.

And see? It even allowed me to point the blame for the fingers-in-the-icing to the appropriate source, my daughter. You can’t see too well in the picture, but the indents are what happen when you mess with flooded icing before it’s dry.

So what’s the special mother in your life into?

As my mom is my most loyal follower, too, she’ll be getting these early this year.

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Little trivia about yours truly, I originally wanted to write for children. Back when I started submitting manuscripts, I submitted children’s (um, eight years ago, maybe even longer, so for anyone who thinks “how did SHE get handed a book deal?” The answer is, “Eight years of submitting.”). I wrote a children’s novel for my MFA in Literature (The answer is, “Nah, it’s not very good.”) and focused on children’s for my other Masters. If I could lead a parallel life I’d be earning a phD in Children’s Literature somewhere in England. When I studied at Oxford for a summer back in ’01,  I tried to stalk my favorite author, Philip Pullman (you know, His Dark Materials trilogy?) but I was not a good stalker and never even came close.

When I actually step away from the computer long enough to read a book, it’s almost always a novel for children. I read incessantly growing up, from picture books to Early Readers, to Laura Ingalls Wilder, to Nancy Drew (my grandmother’s originals from the ’30s), to any book with a little apple on the spine, to every single Judy Blume book (I AM a child of the ’70s and ’80s after all). Hence, my pride to learn my husband won his elementary school most-books-read-in-a-year award. I think he got to over 200, including Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret?.

So I just had to get on the Dr. Seuss/birthday/Lorax bandwagon. If you’ve not heard, The Lorax is about to hit theaters. So I pulled out my marshmallows and edible writers. I’ll quote from my post here, when I say that “I love that my daughter takes Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax to heart with sincere concern for the loss of the Truffula trees. It demonstrates Dr. Seuss’s genius, too, to convey such a weighty environmental concern so efficiently and neatly.” {SPOILER ALERT} At the end, after the last seed is flung from the window, I have to go back to the earlier pages with the plentiful Truffula trees to show her what the future holds or she’d be too upset at their loss.

I love books and kids.What a perfect combination.

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Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

Did I mention I’m a kid of the ’80s? Born in ’72, graduated high school in ’90. Prime years, my friend. Why am I proud of this? Why do I shake my head at kids who don’t know what life was like before the internet, cell phones, even pagers? To hang out with friends we just called their house and hoped not to get a busy signal . What is it about the decade of our childhood that evokes such fond nostalgia? When really, the ages of 8 to 18 are the most depressed, self-conscious, clueless and awkward we likely will ever face? These could not have been good times, yet I sigh with glee whenever I see anything that reminds me of that iconic era. It’s probably just the memory of youth when so much possibility lay ahead.

Been thinking too much lately. Must be my age. Or the kid starting school and about to face her own decade of memories. Anyhoo, here are some ’80s tribute cookies.

I used my sugar cookie dough to cut out square and rectangle cookies. Then I flooded the background with my royal icing, tinted white with Americolor Soft Gel Paste. Let the flooded background dry overnight. Then click HERE for tips on drawing with edible pens.

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Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!

My little darling started school yesterday. Real school. All day school. She’s only 4 (as of Saturday, rainbow birthday party pics are forthcoming), but here in Washington, DC, the public schools start at age 3, though we didn’t take advantage last year.

Now a bit about the school system in DC. (Anyone totally uninterested in DC schools, skip this entire paragraph. And then you’ll jump right to my daughter’s newfound fame.) The DC public school system problems are too big to cover in a post about marshmallows. I will say, the schools are one reason many move to Maryland and Virginia. We decided to stick it out in DC. Sadly, the best public schools are in neighborhoods where homes start around one million bucks. Not in our budget. Private schools in this area are between 20 and 30 grand a year. Not in our budget. In Washington DC, you may theoretically send your child to any public school, even out of your neighborhood. But priority is given to neighborhood kids, and then you and hundreds or thousands of parents enter their kids in a lottery for the remaining spots. The best public schools have very few spots. We had no luck. Enter choice number 2: Charter schools. DC has many. Charter schools are essentially public schools (same structure, same calendar) that are privately run. Like all schools everywhere, there are great charter schools and less than great charter schools. You do the research, apply, and your kid enters the lottery. The best charter schools have a ridiculous number of applications, and getting in on the lottery is like, well…. winnng the lottery. Of all our applications, we were accepted to only one, a brand spanking new charter school. The newness makes this high risk, but I have high hopes for this one… I’m pretty impressed so far. One downside of our charter school scenario is that the school is about a twenty minute commute each way. Sigh. And the public school for our neighborhood is right next to our house. Really, we live next door. Each morning as we pile in the car for our commute in rush hour traffic, that proximity will taunt me. Sigh again.

On the first day of school, the Mayor chooses a few schools to visit. Of the couple hundred DC schools, he chose my daughter’s. She and all of her new classmates sat in a circle with the teacher, dozens of parents, politicos, TV cameras and reporters packed in behind them, as the Mayor of DC read them a book (though he did more ad libbing than reading, and got more than a few chuckles from the parents). Then on my way home after picking her up, I get a call from the school. Apparently a reporter snapped my daughter’s picture while she was napping on her cot, and they’d like my permission to publish said picture in The Washington Post. My first response, of course, was “Oh my god, she NAPPED? How did you get her to nap?” So for my daughter’s first day of school–ever!–she hung with the mayor and got her pic in the Post. Pretty memorable.

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Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!