My story began with MyYahoo. One day Yahoo suggested that I add a feed for The Pioneer Woman Cooks to my page. I went to check it out even though I'd never really been into blogging before.
Meanwhile, one day my husband comes home with these cookie cutters and tells me that he wants sugar and gingerbread cookies. I had never done cut out cookies before, heck I don't even really do cut out biscuits. Drop cookies are more my thing, just get em on the pan and in the oven. They taste good even if they don't look good. Anyway, I figured I'd give it a try so I set out to find a sugar cookie recipe. All the sudden, on PW Cooks there was this post about decorated sugar cookies, it's even called Decorated Sugar Cookies.
In this post, not only does it show these awesome decorated cookies to give me inspiration it gives me links to
- a sugar cookie recipe
- a royal icing recipe
- Bake at 350 blog
- I am Baker blog
- One Tough Cookie blog
- Bakerella blog
Wow, talk about inspiration. I was so ready to rock and roll. Now to just find time and master the art of rolling and cutting cookies.
Hubby's friends even made fun of me because every time they came over I was making yet another batch of cookies. I finally read somewhere (not sure where at the moment) that if you make the cookies thicker, they are sturdier. AHA!! Now on to gingerbread. I don't even remember now where I found my gingerbread cookie recipe. That was not an easy one to find.
By this time in blogging world, I was completely hooked by the way.
So anyway, as soon as I found a gingerbread recipe that I liked after making my own changes, here come Bridget with this post titled "Gingerbread Dudes, Gals & Pups, plus *the best* gingerbread cookie recipe." Of course this is just my luck, this is generally how things work in my life.
So back to making the cookies pretty, I tried one night by myself after Hubby went to bed, I decorated a total of 8 trees. The icing was so thick (I can be a little impatient sometimes) I had to just start spreading it around with my (clean) finger. They were not so hot but they tasted pretty good :). I then decided that if I were to go through all the trouble of the royal icing again I would have to decorate A LOT of cookies to make it worth my while to make and (correctly) thin all that icing.
After this wonderful idea, I decided to dedicate a whole weekend to cookies. They would be everyones gifts. I could give them to co-workers, Hubby's employee's, send some to family, give some to friends and neighbors. Oh how sweet and thoughtful it would be. Saturday I spent approximately 8 hours making, rolling, cutting and baking cookies. Sunday my wonderful friend came over and helped me decorate the 7-8 dozen cookies I made (not really sure what I was thinking making so many cookies, it seemed like a good idea Saturday morning).
We spent about 8 hours and a few jello shots and decorated all those cookies. My kitchen was covered with cookies that needed to dry about 24 hours. Monday I went to work after admiring all my cookies. Monday night I came home and started packaging up cookies in these cute little cellophane bags I found at Hobby Lobby. I started with the cookies we did first but I started realizing that not all the cookies seemed "dry." I'm not an expert at decorating cookies but I didn't think that they should be tacky and leave icing on whatever they touched. I left them for another 24 hours figuring that would be plenty.
HA, I wish. Tuesday morning I realized that even the first cookies we did that seemed dry were now clumped together in the cute little cellophane bags. UGH. Tuesday night the cookies were still not totally dry. At this point I just started crying and told Hubby, "get to eating, we're never going to be able to give these cookies away," they couldn't touch anything or they would stick.
Finally (a few weeks later) the cookies were gone and no one wanted to see or smell or even hear about another cookie for a while at my house. A german chocolate cake was even requested by Hubby. Then one day I found this Chocolate Chip Cut Out Cookie recipe and just had to make some cookies with it. You can see them here. Thank God, these were a hit, now I have 3 cookie recipes in my arsenal, yippee.
Anyway, back to the story. I was now totally immersed in the blog world. I started reading more on Pioneer Woman's website. The confessions section is a great section. I also started following several other great blogs. I began to feel this pull towards blogging. I'm still not sure what it is that my blog is really about besides creativity. I just want to find something that makes me happy I guess.
So here I was feeling this guidance to start a blog but with no idea what to blog about and no idea what to call it. I finally told God, if you want me to start a blog, you gotta tell me what to call it at least and a little direction in what to blog about would be an added bonus.
I am a medical billing specialist which means that I fight with insurance companies to pay claims they don't want to pay and I fight with patients who don't think they should actually pay for medical services provided. This job leads to a lot of negativity in my life.
So I kept praying, reading and thinking. I finally realized that I just want to bring joy to people and I want to be happy. I love baking and have been wanting to branch out into other hobbies and find my niche so I didn't want it to be a primarily baking site. Somewhere in all my reading I found this idea to take 365 pictures in a year, in this same post it said you could also try 52 pics a year if you think that 365 is too much. This is where I got the idea to do 365 pictures this year and 52 creative projects.
I finally settled on Creating Sweet Smiles because this is my goal and I just had to have something baking related in the title because that is my favorite hobby.
So I hope you enjoy my blog and if any of my posts bring a smile to your face, please click the box at the bottom of the post and let me know and comments are always welcome.
Stacy
Hubby's friends even made fun of me because every time they came over I was making yet another batch of cookies. I finally read somewhere (not sure where at the moment) that if you make the cookies thicker, they are sturdier. AHA!! Now on to gingerbread. I don't even remember now where I found my gingerbread cookie recipe. That was not an easy one to find.
By this time in blogging world, I was completely hooked by the way.
So anyway, as soon as I found a gingerbread recipe that I liked after making my own changes, here come Bridget with this post titled "Gingerbread Dudes, Gals & Pups, plus *the best* gingerbread cookie recipe." Of course this is just my luck, this is generally how things work in my life.
So back to making the cookies pretty, I tried one night by myself after Hubby went to bed, I decorated a total of 8 trees. The icing was so thick (I can be a little impatient sometimes) I had to just start spreading it around with my (clean) finger. They were not so hot but they tasted pretty good :). I then decided that if I were to go through all the trouble of the royal icing again I would have to decorate A LOT of cookies to make it worth my while to make and (correctly) thin all that icing.
After this wonderful idea, I decided to dedicate a whole weekend to cookies. They would be everyones gifts. I could give them to co-workers, Hubby's employee's, send some to family, give some to friends and neighbors. Oh how sweet and thoughtful it would be. Saturday I spent approximately 8 hours making, rolling, cutting and baking cookies. Sunday my wonderful friend came over and helped me decorate the 7-8 dozen cookies I made (not really sure what I was thinking making so many cookies, it seemed like a good idea Saturday morning).
We spent about 8 hours and a few jello shots and decorated all those cookies. My kitchen was covered with cookies that needed to dry about 24 hours. Monday I went to work after admiring all my cookies. Monday night I came home and started packaging up cookies in these cute little cellophane bags I found at Hobby Lobby. I started with the cookies we did first but I started realizing that not all the cookies seemed "dry." I'm not an expert at decorating cookies but I didn't think that they should be tacky and leave icing on whatever they touched. I left them for another 24 hours figuring that would be plenty.
HA, I wish. Tuesday morning I realized that even the first cookies we did that seemed dry were now clumped together in the cute little cellophane bags. UGH. Tuesday night the cookies were still not totally dry. At this point I just started crying and told Hubby, "get to eating, we're never going to be able to give these cookies away," they couldn't touch anything or they would stick.
Finally (a few weeks later) the cookies were gone and no one wanted to see or smell or even hear about another cookie for a while at my house. A german chocolate cake was even requested by Hubby. Then one day I found this Chocolate Chip Cut Out Cookie recipe and just had to make some cookies with it. You can see them here. Thank God, these were a hit, now I have 3 cookie recipes in my arsenal, yippee.
Anyway, back to the story. I was now totally immersed in the blog world. I started reading more on Pioneer Woman's website. The confessions section is a great section. I also started following several other great blogs. I began to feel this pull towards blogging. I'm still not sure what it is that my blog is really about besides creativity. I just want to find something that makes me happy I guess.
So here I was feeling this guidance to start a blog but with no idea what to blog about and no idea what to call it. I finally told God, if you want me to start a blog, you gotta tell me what to call it at least and a little direction in what to blog about would be an added bonus.
I am a medical billing specialist which means that I fight with insurance companies to pay claims they don't want to pay and I fight with patients who don't think they should actually pay for medical services provided. This job leads to a lot of negativity in my life.
So I kept praying, reading and thinking. I finally realized that I just want to bring joy to people and I want to be happy. I love baking and have been wanting to branch out into other hobbies and find my niche so I didn't want it to be a primarily baking site. Somewhere in all my reading I found this idea to take 365 pictures in a year, in this same post it said you could also try 52 pics a year if you think that 365 is too much. This is where I got the idea to do 365 pictures this year and 52 creative projects.
I finally settled on Creating Sweet Smiles because this is my goal and I just had to have something baking related in the title because that is my favorite hobby.
So I hope you enjoy my blog and if any of my posts bring a smile to your face, please click the box at the bottom of the post and let me know and comments are always welcome.
Stacy
