Rainbow Cookies

Well, we just had St. Patrick's Day, a bake sale and a preschool rainbow color picnic all in one week, so of course I was on a mission to make something extra festive and brilliant. So Rainbow Cookies it was! There were a couple recipes online but they were either in grams (and I don't have the patience to bother converting to good ol' cups and other measurements that only make sense to Americans.) or YouTube videos (who has the time to WATCH somebody else make cookies?! No thanks!) So I used my brain and my mom's Christmas cookie recipe (which has the bonus of me KNOWING it's delicious!).

   In comparison to my Mom's cookies which require rolling out, cutting, rolling out, cutting, rolling out, cutting, (and baking about a hundred cookie sheets), then frosting in a million colors (Granted, they're beautiful in the end, but I'm over it about halfway through), these cookies were a cinch. The stacking of the colors into an arch-shaped log isn't terribly thrilling and a little time consuming (about a half an hour to mix the colors and stack the log) but after chilling the log, you're home free with just slicing and baking. And they are ADORABLE! and BRILLIANT! And everybody will want to know how you did it!

I did this in two days to spare my sanity and what little time I have in a day between drop-off and drop-off and toddler-feeding (seriously this girl eats 5 meals a day.) and then pick-up and pick-up. And, yeah, I'll admit it, I do this stuff during the day because I hate to see my adult time get eaten up by baking for bake sales and picnics. Also, I am blessed with children who think baking time is quality hang time.

OK, so, really, this is


HOW YOU DO IT!

1. Mix up your butter cookie dough, or sugar cookie dough. To be honest, I'm not sure what kind of dough my mom's cookies are but it works and tastes delicious and that's all I need to know.

Here's the recipe I altered to make the rainbow cookies. The real recipe for Christmas Cookies to follow.

RAINBOW COOKIES

• 1 c. softened unsalted butter
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 3 cups sifted flour (Honestly, I just stir the flour in my canister before lightly spooning it into the cup, it's less of a pain in the caboose and the results are good.)
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Cream together butter, sugar, vanilla and egg. Sifte together flour, salt and baking powder. Stir together flour, salt and baking powder. 

Add flour mixture gradually to butter mixture.



2. Roll the dough into a cone-shaped log. Divide into 6 sections with each ball being slightly larger than the last. (Ignore that extra ball in the background of my picture, I was doing a double batch.)

3. Put a thumbprint in the middle of each ball and put your food coloring in. I used gel colors. It was a little less messy and the colors are more vibrant. The small ball is purple, then blue, green, yellow, orange, then red is the largest.

(again, ignore my doubles, I was doing that double batch.)

4. Roll the purple ball into a log about 1" in diameter. Mine was about 7-8" long.
 (In the end the log was about a foot, just so you know.)

5. With each subsequent color, flatten the ball into a rectangle that will wrap around the log to make an arch. This is about how mine measured out: blue was about 2.5" wide, then green was 3.25, yellow4, orange 4.75 and red 5.5. With each color getting about an inch longer with every addition, because the log gets stretch a little longer every time you wrap a new color. Really smoosh them on there so there hopefully won't be gaps between the layers.

Keep going....

Keep going....

Done!

6. Put the log into the refrigerator for at least an hour. I did overnight, so onto:



DAY TWO:

7. Preheat oven to 375*.

8. Take the log out of the fridge. Cut the ends off, taking off only as much as you can to make a nice flat surface on either end.

9. Cut the rest of the log into slices 1/4" thick. Sometimes you'll get gaps between the colors, I just kind of smoosh the back together gently, sometimes I rock the log back and forth along the arch to smoosh the colors together more before cutting. So far they don't fall apart after baking so take that for that's worth.

 10. Bake on parchment lined cookie sheets, leaving a little space between them, for 10 minutes or until edges just golden brown.

11. The bottoms of the rainbows will be a little pushed out, so while the cookies are warm cut off the bottom of each rainbow with a sharp knife to get a nice clean edge. Cool on wire racks.

I suppose Skittles might sue me if I say "Taste the rainbow," but look at these, how can I resist!?

Pipe Cleaner Rainbow

Whatever you call them- pipe cleaners, chenille stems- they are a great crafting material. They're fuzzy, they're bendy. You can twist them up and twist them together. You can use them for making animals, as stems on flowers (heck, I use them in the kitchen to clean out those nasty straws on sippy cups too.).

Yesterday, after way too much television, it was time to do something with our hands and creativity. Spiff and I decided we wanted to make a rainbow. But we're pretty bored with paper rainbows. Ah ha, I had just bought pipe cleaners for another project that very morning. Of course there were a rainbow of colors. But gluing them onto paper is pretty boring, and also pretty frustrating frankly. Pipe cleaners don't lend themselves much to the 2D or glue. But they do have nifty bending powers and they do have prickly ends just suited for sticking them into things. Like an egg carton. And, voila, our rainbow craft was born.


What You Need:

• Pipe cleaners in the colors of the rainbow
• an egg carton
• craft glue
• cotton balls
• an embroidery needle or pencil or paper clip end for poking.

What You Do:

1. Rip the top of your egg carton off so you just have the bumps. Cut the bumpy bottom of you egg carton down the middle the long way so you have a long row of 6 cups.
2. In each second cup in from the ends, poke a line of holes with your needle for each of your pipe cleaners. This is where we'll shove the ends through. So you'll have a hole for each end of each stem.
3. Bend the purple pipe cleaner into an arch, push one end through the innermost hole on each side. pull them ends so it'll be small enough to fit inside the next color. Do the same with blue in the neighboring holes, green in the next one, yellow in the next, orange, then red. Adjust the ends if you have to so they fit inside each other.
4. Now bend up the ends so they tuck nicely into the cup on the underside. Now you have your rainbow.
5. Let's make some clouds! (Because egg cartons are ugly.) Stretch several cotton balls so they're wispy and glue them all around and on top of the exposed egg carton.
6.  

And that's all there is to it! 

Painted Pots

We used Decoart Patio Paints (I bought a sample pack on clearance in the flower section at our craft store.) on dollar ceramic pots to make pretty pots that can stay outside all summer and sit on our windowsills when winter comes. Supposedly with Patio Paints you don't need to seal the art once the pot is painted. If you can't find patio paints you can use acrylic craft paints, but you might want to put a coat of exterior varnish (such as Ceramcoat) on them. I was surprised at how long this project kept my 4 year old son entertained, and the 2 year old did a bang-up job (thankfully not literally!) too. They also really enjoyed picking out their own plants to put in and potting them.  I think I'm going to have the kids paint some of the rocks in my rock borders next to add more color to our yard.

Paper Butterfly

With two sheets of construction paper and a pipe cleaner you can make a pretty butterfly to hang in your window or from your ceiling.

 

Things You Need:

• 2 pieces of construction paper (or two magazine pages)
• 1 pipe cleaner
• 1 piece of string cut to about 30"
• scotch tape (optional)

What You Do:

1. Accordion fold one piece of paper every 1/2" or so lengthwise. (This means, fold and crease from one end half an inch, flip it over, fold it again a half an inch and so forth and so on until you get to the end of the page so that the paper is never closed in on itself and looks like an accordion.)
2. Accordion fold the other piece every 1/2" or so width wise. 
3. While still folded, fold each paper in half (as in fold the stack of folds you have to make like a "V" -so the two ends meet up and it kind of looks like a fan.)
4. Now you have two pairs of wings, each set a different length.
5. Fold the pipe cleaner in half and twist up two inches from the bent closed end, leaving the two ends free. (These will be the antennae.)
6. Now place the wings in the pipe cleaner so the two loose ends of pipe cleaner sandwich the wings and the wings rest on the top of the twist, or butterfly body. (If you want, tape the wings together first around the middle bends.)
7. Place the middle of the string here too. That will be your hanger.
8. Twist the rest of the pipe cleaner up so the wings are set in place, making the top of the butterfly body.
9. Separate the two "antennae" and twirl the ends.
10. Tie the two ends of string together to make your loop from which to hang your butterfly.

         Trust me, this is all easier done than said.

Rice Krispie Treat Nests

In spirit of Spring, we did a little twist on the traditional Rice Krispie Treat. Using the regular old recipe from Rice Krispies we made birds' nests. Instead of spreading the sticky mess into a pan, we let it cool for a couple minutes (to make it more moldable.). Then we greased up a 1/4 c. measuring cup and scooped balls onto greased cookie sheets. We shaped them a little with greased up hands so they resembled ice cream scoops and then flipped them so the flat sides were up. Then making a little indentation in the middle we stuck some Cadbury Mini Eggs into the centers. Cute, simple, delicious. I suspect you can do just about anything with this edible Floam...

Easter Bunny Card

This was a really simple card to make. All you need is some scissors, colored paper (maybe card stock) and some glue. And maybe a cotton ball. Here's what we did.

Cut a piece of 8.5 x 11' card stock in half width-wise so you have two pieces that are 5.5 x 8.5". Fold each in half so you have two 4.25x5.5" cards (which fit a size A-2 invitation envelopes perfectly.)

Glue a piece of blue construction paper the same size (or maybe even a smidge bigger) to the card front. Trim if necessary.

Cut a strip of green paper about 1.5-2" wide an d4.5" long. holding it the long way, snip with scissors cuts that don't go the whole width every 1/8" or so the entire length. Now you have grass. I like to "ruffle" it a little to give it some depth. Now glue that onto the bottom.

Cut out of regular old white paper a bunny (or two) and an Easter egg (or a dozen) if you want. Glue those guys into the grass. Add some color.

We also pulled a small piece of cotton from a cotton ball and glued that to the bunny's butt for a fluffy tail.

All done! Easy peasy.

Cut-and-Color Printable: Mr's Bunny's Basket

The Easter Bunny is on his way soon so here's a cut and paste printable to celebrate. Just color it in, decorate your eggs, cut them out or on the dotted lines, and slip them in Mr. Bunny's Basket.

the Printable:

Printable: Ducks in a Row

Finally, it's spring! This puts me in mind of flowers and sun and bugs and baby ducks. Enjoy this springy coloring page.