Wow this looks refreshing...

It has been SO HOT and muggy this week, and I have spent more than one sleepless night trying to figure out how to install air-conditioning in our hot-water-heated house (um...for free).  I was sitting here, sweating and complaining as per norm, when I opened the new Covet Garden and amongst the gorgeous photos of a very funky home I saw this recipe and thought of the ginormous watermelon in our fridge and the ginormous bunches of basil in our garden.  I tell you, if I weren't so damn hot I would get up and make this lovely concoction...

The Falling Leaves...

"The falling leaves, drift by my window, the autumn leaves, of red and gold...."  I have had that song stuck in my head all day long!  We have been doing all sorts of autumn leaves-related projects around here, and when I found this cookie cutter at Michael's I knew I wanted to make "Falling Leaves" sugar cookies.  I don't normally do anything too strenuous around Thanksgiving food- or decor-wise.  Until about 4 years ago, we really had no family to celebrate with and honestly just enjoyed it as a long weekend, maybe visiting with some friends from home.  We also didn't eat turkey until recently!  But now that we are our own little family, it seems appropriate to make a little more effort.  (That, and I am Suzy Homemaker now, professionally-speaking.) :)

The boys love helping out in the kitchen anyway, so it wasn't difficult to talk them into it.  Just look at those eager beavers...  The little guy was of course covered in flour before we were two minutes in...

I made a glaze icing (using corn syrup instead of butter) since they seem to yield brighter colours.  I went with green, red, yellow, orange and brown.  With the differently-coloured bowls, icing, and spoons it made for a LOT of colour... I will put the recipe at the end of the post.

Then we had fun painting.  We mixed colours with spoons and tooth picks and I must say the boys made some really beautiful cookies!

The cookie recipe I used came with the cookie cutter:
Roll-Out Cookies
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 3/4 cups all-pupose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Preheat over to 400F.  In mixer bowl (or if you are old-school like me, with a hand mixer) cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in egg and extracts.  Mix flour, baking powder and salt; add to butter mixture 1 cup at a time, mixing after each addition.  Divide dough into 2 balls.  On a floured surface, roll each ball into a circle approx. 1/8 inch thick.  Dip cookie cutter in flour before each use.  Bake cookies on ungreased cookie sheet 6-7 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned.

The icing recipe I adapted from one online:
Sugar Cookie Glaze Icing
1 cup confectioners sugar  (adding more to desired consistency)
1 tbsp light corn syrup
2 tbsp water
food colouring
Because some colours needed more drops of food colouring than others, I added more sugar to keep them on the thick side - if they were too runny they would run off the cookie and on to the tray.

So what are your Thanksgiving traditions and recipes?  I definitely need to add to my repertoire.  Style at Home has a ridiculous array of ideas for food and decor - this recipe looks especially yummy.  House and Home also has come great decorating ideas that I may attempt, but I am going to try to stick with projects the boys can help out with.  Here are some awesome ideas my friend Blake wrote about for Canadian Parent, including gratitude rolls - genius and delicious.  Most of the American design sites aren't as crammed with suggestions yet, I guess don't have the same deadline looming this weekend!

I leave you with this, so you can hum along with me  - for the next few days at least:

Recipe Cards

I have about 1 bazillion cookbooks, but for some reason I seem to get most of my recipes either online or from a magazine.  Which means I have lots of manilla folders stuffed with crumpled printouts and splattered magazine pages.  I have been meaning for a while to organize them into binders by type of dish (stop laughing).  My mother-in-law has a brilliant system of using little photo albums and folding the recipes neatly into the sleeves.  However, when I saw this on How About Orange, I just loved the idea of using beautiful wooden recipe card holder like my mums, all with these pretty, FREE, printable cards.  You could just cut and paste the recipe right from the web!

Cute, huh?  And you could of course get a lovely box on Etsy - here are a couple of my faves:

from here

from here.  Much better than an overflowing folder...

Happy St Paddy's Day!

We are all decked out in green today in honour of St Paddy's Day!  And on Shelterrific, I found this recipe for Guinness cupcakes, which would totally be worth making even if you couldn't care less about St Patrick's Day - hello BEER and CUPCAKES.  What more is there?

Find it here - and if you make them, tell me how they turn out!  Or better yet - give me one!! :)