Valentine cookies and more

Well kids, Valentine's Day is tomorrow. Are you ready? Have you made your Valentine a card? Gotten ready for all those school Valentine's? I love this day of celebrating love. It's a reminder to show appreciation for the ones you care about the most.   Over the weekend I got ready by making 100, yes I said 100, sugar cookies for my children's classmates. There are 14 kids in my oldest son's class (thank goodness it's so small) and 17 kids in my middle child's preschool class. So I made 31 bags of 3 cookies per bag and 1 left over.  It took me a good 4-5 hours on Saturday to bake so here we go!  First off, let me just say baking in my oven with this pretty Valentine's towel from Target made me smile. It came in a set of two and the other towel is pink with raised hearts. So cute.

For my sugar cookies, my recipe is as follows: 

1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Directions

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

For the frosting, I used:

2 cups confectioners' sugar, 4 teaspoons milk, 4 teaspoons light corn syrup, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, and red food coloring. I mixed everything in the mixer until it was smooth. I also used various sprinkles and added them before the icing had a chance to dry.

The great thing about this recipe is that it makes a ton of cookies. The bad thing about it is, sugar cookies take forever. After you make the dough it has to chill for an hour. Then there's rolling it all out and cutting your cookies. Baking them. Frosting them. But look at how cute they turn out. It feels worth it to me.

I printed up labels using Microsoft Word and included the words "With love from Charlie (or Maddock) and below I wrote that the cookies contain milk and eggs for those kids with such allergies.

And here's all 31 bags. Can't wait to help my kids pass these out tomorrow. Oh and just so you know these can be put in the freezer until you need them. I placed mine in the freezer so they'd be fresh on Valentine's Day.

Elsewhere in the house I put up my felt Valentine Wreath I made last year.  I forgot to mention I frosted my back door glass windows for privacy.  That was a fun little project and super easy.

I also hung my scrap book paper hearts over our empty china cabinet. And my daughter painted the little wooden heart that I picked up at Michaels last year on clearance. She had fun making it.

So here's hoping you and yours have a wonderful Valentine's Day tomorrow. Love you all!

xo

Cathleen