Valentine's Treats?

Well it's that time of year again, friends. Sugar and rainbows abound. Glitter and love is found everywhere. Red is the predominate color...wear it or be held accountable. When you say "February" out loud it sounds like "red roses".

I thought I would try using some pearl or luster dust on this year's cookies. I had a vision...which didn't work out. I didn't even attempt the vision for this holiday. My vision involves DH for his steady hand, an exacto knife, stencil sheets and a rectangular cookie cutter. The most important part? The cookie cutter, which I have yet to order much less have in hand.

Sooooo...instead I thought "hearts". Predictable, right? But hearts it is. Not knowing how well the luster dust would work or how easy it would be to work with, I came up with a genius idea! In theory, a genius idea. I used a large scalloped edge heart cookie cutter for the cut-out. After I piped the outline on I used a #3 tip and piped my best approximation of a heart in the middle of the cookies. My piping skills leave much to be desired.

I flooded the whole cookie with regular white royal icing. My theory was that I could then come back and paint the small inner heart with luster dust mixed with vodka. Well....this is what I ended up with.

If I had known how easy the luster dust was to use, I would've just painted the hearts on freehand instead of trying to paint over wonky piped hearts. Word to the wise, though: when you mix your luster dust and extract/vodka, the dust appears to be evaporating and sparkly. It can be distracting. Seriously though the alcohol evaporates pretty fast so work quickly!

I also did some small hearts. At least they all taste brilliant even if they look less than stellar.

And to offset the cookies and sweets I and DH are sure to eat this weekend, I started drinking this Glowing Green smoothie (thanks Pinterest for the pin!). Here is the blender pre-blend. Oh, and I adapted the recipe a wee bit to use pineapple instead of mango due to the large amount of carbs and sugar in mango.

And here is the beautiful smoothie! The best part is that you can make it the night before if you have to, so tomorrow's breakfast will consist of opening the fridge, grabbing the smoothie container and some greek yogurt.

Done and done.