Happy Valentine's Day!

Guess what all of our loyal fans in the blogosphere get for Valentine's Day? Yep, you guessed it...a new blog entry! :) After oh, I don't know, about 6 weeks of neglect, I've finally gotten around to posting here again. My plan, of course, is to get back in the swing of things and update this regularly again.

Well, now that you've recovered from that shock, let me show you what I decided to do for all my best guys (minus my littlest guy) for Valentine's Day. Jeremy is a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies, and the boys don't mind eating them either, so I decided to get creative and make mini cookie cakes for all of them. I was going for something like the ones you get in the mall, only smaller. I'm not quite as skilled as the professionals in the mall, but I think they turned out pretty cute. And they were definitely yummy!

Here's my cookie batch, cooked up in my jelly roll pan. Before I baked the cookies, I messed around with paper and scissors to make heart patterns that took up as much of the pan as possible while still getting in 4 equally sized small hearts and one larger one. I placed the paper patterns on the cooked cookie and cut around them with a knife...


I had to remove some cookie from the corner to slide the spatula under...those corner bits also doubled nicely as a taste-test of the cookie. I wish I could tell you that that corner bit was all I taste-tested...


The 4 smaller cookies cooling. The bigger cookie, being in the center of the pan, wasn't quite cooked enough and went back into the oven for a few more minutes.


My original plan included home made buttercream frosting, but in the end I came to my senses and decided that the tub of Duncan Hines Homestyle Vanilla hiding in the pantry was a much more expedient option. Here are a couple of the cookies, piped and sprinkled with red sugar.

Jeremy's cookie. It's a good thing I have no aspirations to work as a cake decorator, LOL! Although I have bought grocery store cakes with worse writing...

I put them in gallon zippy bags, plates and all, so they'd stay fresh overnight. Jeremy's, being on a dinner-sized plate, got well wrapped with plastic wrap. In the morning, I placed them all on the table before breakfast, complete with a bit of red curling ribbon for decoration.

Here are some of my adorable boys with their cookies...

Joey...

Jordan...

Believe it or not, this picture was BEFORE the sugar rush kicked in!!

There, a much sweeter picture of my Jonathan...

And finally Joshua...

Just in case you are wondering, I did give them cereal for breakfast in addition to their cookies. I'm not THAT irresponsible, holiday or not! :) Jonathan and Jordan actually decided that cookies were not acceptable breakfast food and saved all of theirs for later in the afternoon! Joshua and Joseph ate about half of theirs. I think Jeremy might have just had cookie for breakfast. Jeremy and the boys also surprised me with sweet Valentine's Day cards. Even Josiah had "signed" one of them.

After breakfast, we decided to go out and get some of the boys some much-needed hair cuts, and go exploring in Central Park. We even took along a picnic lunch...when was the last time you ate a picnic outdoors with temps in the 30s? That might have been a bit more "adventure" than I usually enjoy, but it worked and kept us from spending $40 to eat at McDonald's!

All in all, we had a very pleasant Valentine's Day, and hopefully created some fun family memories. I can't ask for much more than that!