Gorgeous Girl and I had the most lovely day together. The Husband was at work, so Valentine's Day was a Girls Day for us. Throughout the day we ate heart shaped sandwiches, heart shaped pizza, heart shaped toast, and heart shaped fruit (tricky, but do-able!) My Mum turned up too, so we shared choccies and baked heart shaped cookies, the sun shone and the day was fabulous. These are the prettiest cookies I have ever made in my life .. ever!
I am heavy handed when it comes to cooking. I will always give things a try, but often things fail to turn out the way I hoped. Every now and then I see a little spark that says I should continue to try, that maybe I'm not such a clatter hands or as clumsy as I thought ~ there is hope!
These cookies were made using a recipe and method I found on the delightful Cherry Menlove's site. What makes the method different is to chill the cookie dough not just once, but twice, the second time being after cutting the shapes. Visit [here] for both recipe and how-to. Honestly, chilling post cutting is an absolute revelation. I will always do this now, as the cookies keep perfect shape during baking.
I did as Cherry suggested, and did not let the cookies bake for too long. They were creamy-golden, not browny/gold.
Once cooled, I decorated with a smidgeon of icing. I mixed icing sugar with lemon juice and the teeniest bit of pink food colouring gel, and then scattered with pink crystals, and a tiny sprinkle of edible glitter.
The husband has a couple in his packed lunch today. 
I took plenty of photos as they looked so pretty. I still can't believe that I made them! The book that the husband bought me for Valentine's Day continues to inspire.
I sacrificed one of my Christmas pressie cake forks for this project. Dear readers, I really want to tell you that this is a simple to do thing, but in truth it isn't as easy as it looks.
On Friday, I vanished into the garage with aforementioned cake fork, a hammer, and a nail, and bashed away until a hole appeared in the fork. I had decided to just bash a hole through the fork, for no other reason than I couldn't be bothered to get the drill out and search for the correct drill bit. In my mind this should have taken a minute or two. In Real Life it took at least 15 minutes, with a lot of bad language when I narrowly missed bashing my fingers into oblivion.
Finally, I achieved my mission.
And the point to all this effort? Why, to make a hook of course! 
As it turned out, all of my effort wasn't good enough, and the drill was needed anyway. So, I asked the husband to drill through to make the hole bigger as I could not be bothered (I was beyond caring at this point, but wanted to finish what I'd started, minus the tricky stuff!!!) The bottom of the fork was then bent up to form a hook, and attached to the front of the pantry door, where the calendar lives.
This is how it looked in the book [Rediscovered Treasures]. 
I love this idea, it's quirky and fun, but I really would not do it again. It's a lot more effort that it first appears. And on top of everything else, I have made a start on my veggies for this year! Last year, out of everything grown in the garden, the potatoes were the best. We grew them in a large pot [seen in this post], and it was like digging for gold when pushing the soil around and finding gorgeous golden nuggets hidden inside. I want to do the same thing again this year, so am already 'chitting' my spuds on a windowsill.
