Lazy Sundays and cooking adventures

Bill, Evan and I had a great lazy Sunday.  For starters, Evan slept for 8 1/2 hours for the fourth time in five nights, so we were well-rested and ready to take on this beautiful day.  On the to-do list was grocery shopping, leisurely running, sugar cookie decorating, and the completely random, but totally necessary trip to Sam's.  Are Bill and I the only ones who go to Sam's for no other reason but to browse and eat samples?  I hope not.  Today wasn't a great day at Sam's because despite being there during lunch time, there was not a sample to be found.  I know, right!

After returning home from shopping, I decided to go on my 2 1/2 mile easy run with no headphones, no cell phones, just me and mother nature. Well, actually just me and suburban Oklahoma with not a tree over 6 feet tall in sight, but you take what you can get.  It was such a beautiful day and people were out.  Kids flying kites, families having picnics, I saw it all during my short run through the neighborhood.  It was so nice to see people out and made me thankful that Bill and I have a great neighborhood for Evan to play in when he gets a little older.

Also, on my agenda was baking sugar cookies.  True to my completely random personality and forever changing hobbies, I have always wanted to be able to decorate a decent cookie.  I don't think by any means I am going to open a bakery anytime soon, but I am determined to figure out how to do this.  I have tried to bake cookies on several occasions.  I remember one Easter Bill and I tried to decorate cookies and ended up with about 3 dozen broken-eared bunnies who looked like they suffered through a bad kindergarten class.  Then during Christmas 2010, my friend Sharon and I embarked on a journey of beautiful Christmas trees and perfectly round red-nosed Rudolphs and ended up with a Ziploc bag full broken pieces dipped in God knows what.  It was bad.  So this time, I set out to research first.

 I started out by reading every single word on the recipe posts of this blog: Sweet Sugar Belle.  I really liked her recipes, but I think I will use vanilla extract next time instead of almond.  I wanted to use almond because it sounds so official and baker-like.  Vanilla just seemed homemade and I am on the quest for a cookie I can be proud of. One that you would think I paid good money for.  But, it turns out that I kind of like vanilla. No, I really like vanilla.  So, I think next time I am going to use almond for the cookie and vanilla in the icing.  I will let you know how it goes.

Because Bill and I are trying to get used to our new camera, we are committed to taking pictures daily.  So, sorry for the heavily loaded pics of my cookie adventures.

Evan helped:

Then he got bored.

And the final product:

Not bad for my first time.  I have about 1 1/2 dozen more clovers frozen and icing in the fridge, so I am going to practice again next weekend.  Also, I plan on tweaking the recipe and trying new recipes until we find the one that is perfect for us.  But, overall, I think my first time deserves a B+.

Bill had his own adventures going while I transformed into Betty Crocker, which included making me delicious fish tacos. 

I am now stuffed and ready to go to bed.