My Harry Potter Themed Party

Being the Harry Potter geek that I am, I had to throw a Harry Potter themed party for Christmas/my birthday last year (yes this is quite an over-due post). I ended up prepping this all by myself (the boyfriend was sick and slept the whole day) so didn't take as many pictures as I should have but it ended up going fantastically and I was really pleased with everything. Of course I have Pinterest to thank (link to my board with my inspirations) for most of the ideas but all in all, it was a lot of fun and now all my friends have a Pottermore account, wand, Hogwarts House, and a Patronus!

If you're into Halloween and have lots of props packed up, you'll have an easy time prepping the house. I borrowed a giant spider from my boyfriend's parents and shoved it right on the floor (was going to hang it but it was massive..like 6 ft long body not including the legs) so that was a nice touch. We also had candles lit all around the house (yes fire hazard but they were all safely placed and no kids running around) and I had used red lipstick to write on my bathroom mirror with the signature "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened again..Enemies of the Heir Beware" which was great and spooked some of my friends haha. I also had a corner of the wall decorated for photos

I made a few wands for photos and just for fun and it was actually so much fun to make and decorate them. I used wooden chopsticks as my base and a hot glue gun to create the designs. Definitely be careful - I burned myself a few times. I watched a few Youtube videos (just search DIY Harry Potter wands) and looked up some pictures of main character's wands for inspiration and help but really it's not hard at all and have fun with it! The hardest part was probably painting over the hot glue because sometimes it would rub off? I used acrylic paint so not sure if that made a difference or not (I think that's what most people do). It took multiple coatings (with drying in between) to get the wands to satisfactory state but overall my friends were really impressed and I was really happy with them!

Can you guess which wands were inspired by which character's wands?!

I had a little stand set up to be a photo booth (hence the polaroid camera included) with the wands and the books!

Onto food! I set up a table with drinks and candy all Harry Potter themed. Because my party took place in the late afternoon, our real dinner food was normal pasta and salad but I did set up the dining table pretty nicely as well (unfortunately didn't take a picture of it) with candles and other sorts to make it look like a Harry Potter feast. If you're looking for real Harry Potter food rather than candy and what not, I'd suggest some sort of pie or pot roast in addition to possibly a soup and salad. Real food ideas were harder to come by on Pinterest and online but when in doubt, just go with anything British!

A lot of the containers I got from Michael's Crafts Store so I'd suggest checking them out if you're looking for some ways to add magic to your party. I got the test tubes ($1 each), light bulb jars ($1.99 each if I recall correctly), mason jars with handles ($2.99 each), and the milk jars (not sure how much these cost, have had them for a while). The Ferris wheel in the back is actually a cupcake holder I bought online from Ebay for less than $20 a while ago. I didn't have time to make cupcakes to actually fill it with but it does spin which is pretty cute haha. The chalk board signs are supposed to be to label cheese I think but their pretty multi-purpose. I got them from Crate and Barrel but I'm sure you can find them online for cheaper as well.

The powdered dung beetles were just jello mix (actually the yellow one was lemon flavored Gatorade powder) that people were to mix/create drinks with. I looked it up and you can use jello mix for this purpose so you can use it as an option if you have jello mix lying around (like I did). If not, you can also just get powdered Kool-Aid or some other powdered drinks and let people have fun! I also made pumpkin juice (see image below; there's only one filled since I had the others in the fridge) using this recipe. It's not bad but you do have stir it frequently or else the pumpkin mix sinks to the bottom. If you're too lazy to click the link (you do have to scroll down through all their photos to get to the recipe), here's the ingredients (just mix it all together)

• 4 liters apple cider or apple juice (what I used)
• 1 small (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
• 1/2 c. sugar (you can add less depending on your preference)
• 2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (I just mixed cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and clove)
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract

Not pictured, but the mason jars with the handles in the back were filled with Butterbeer (what's a Harry Potter party without butterbeer?!) which I made by mixing Root Beer soda (1 L bottle) with a hearty squirt of salted caramel extract (don't shake it to mix it...seems obvious but it went over my head). Then I added a scoop of vanilla ice cream into the jars and poured the soda+caramel mixture in. I can't drink soda but all my friends said it tasted really good so I think it went well? Haha.

A lot of people use Ferrero Rocher as snitches but I didn't have time to make wings and stick them on so I thought, hey golden eggs are a thing and shoved them into a parfait glass I got from a thrift store haha. I didn't take up close pictures of the two jars next to the golden eggs but you can see them on the sides of the photo. The one of the left was filled with gummy worms (Target brand cause I'm cheap) labeled as "dragon worms" and the one on the right had Bean Boozled Jelly Beans (their pretty expensive) on the top layer and then regular knock-off Jelly beans (again Target brand) on the bottom to fill the jar up. Take note that the jar STUNK like smelled SO bad when we opened it and those bean boozled jelly beans do NOT mess around when it comes to the nasty flavors! Had I had more time, I would have created the actual Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans box (here's a template ad another one) and put them in there because I think that's so much cuter. Next time though...!

Of course I had to make macarons with the Harry Potter theme! I used an edible black marker (this is the set I have) to draw the designs and used my basic macaron recipe (blog post here) with some dyed a certain color. I'm pretty proud of my HP font too :) By the way, I got inspiration for these designs from a Pinterest photo I saw so not taking credits!

I also made some chocolate frogs (got a cheap mold for less than $5 on Amazon) and was going to fill one with some ghost pepper shavings..but my mom saw the ghost pepper and freaked out and said it was going to burn a whole in someone's esophagus and threw it out the day before my party. So buying another one wasn't an option so I used some normal hot peppers and hid them in 2 of the chocolate frogs and gave them to my friends. Boy were they surprised haha!

So that about wraps up my Harry Potter party and everything it entailed. I apologize for not having more photos but hopefully this gave you some ideas on how to throw your own Harry Potter party! Have fun with it and embrace your inner wizard/witch! <3

The Art of Making French Macarons

I've been debating if I should make this post, given the plethora of macaron resources available on the web, but thought that, with the countless batches I've made, it wouldn't hurt to add my thoughts, tips, and suggestions that I haven't seen many people talk about. Therefore, this post may skim over the basics of making macarons but I will provide a list of all the posts I've read and found helpful in my journey to making macarons. Please note that I use the French macaron recipe, NOT the Italian version!

Note: I am in NO way an expert at making my macarons (oh how one can dream!) but I have made them enough times and watched enough videos to have learned what does and doesn't work [for me] and what, really, [imo] just doesn't matter. And if you learn anything from reading all this mumbo jumbo, it's that macarons may be finicky, they're very individual-tailored but you can still get away with variation in some places.

1. The Recipe
There are SO many different recipes for macarons and I really don't think it matters which one you use (so long as there are enough reviews saying it works). I've actually written down all the macaron recipes from the big name bloggers and compared their amounts of almond flour, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, and egg whites and yes they do vary (some more so than others) but I've tried them all and they've all created normal nice macarons. In general, the egg white amount is constant in recipes with the greatest variation in almond flour to powdered flour ratio. Granulated sugar is always less than powdered sugar and almond flour but I've found that the amount of granulated sugar doesn't make a huge difference to the success of your macarons. Most recipes call for more powdered sugar than almond flour; others call for equal amounts. I personally like the ones that call for an equal amount because I (assume) it means the macarons will be less sweet. If you go for a recipe that has a super high almond flour ratio though, your macarons will end up with a more cakey dense texture rather than the light fluffy one.
The recipe I am currently using is from Indulge with Mimi . I've halved it so that my ingredients are:

• 25 g egg white
• 22.5 g granulated/white sugar (I've lowered this to 20 g and had no issues with my macarons)
• 32.5 g powdered/confectioners' sugar
• 32.5 g almond flour

My scale doesn't go actually measure to the 0.1 g so I guestimate from there and it doesn't make or break my macarons (more evidence to support my hypothesis that macarons may not be as finicky as you think). I have also tried All Recipes recipe which (when divided by 4) called for:

• 25 g egg white
• 12.5 g granulated/white sugar (I usually used 7g actually without issues)
• 50 g powdered/confectioners' sugar
• 22.5 g almond flour 

What you hopefully can tell is that the top recipe calls for more granulated sugar and less powdered sugar. Some amount of the powdered sugar (about 10g) is also added to the amount of almond flour. So here are 2 quite difference recipes that both gave me fine results. Both have given me batches that didn't work out also but I blame other external factors (ie. myself or the humidity).

2) Batch amounts
I highly recommend that you start with small batches of macarons if you are new to making macarons or experimenting with adding flavors (ie cocoa powder, green tea powder, etc). Even I still work in small batches (mostly because my silipat doesn't fit properly on my tray so I can't fill it up completely) because almond flour is quite expensive and I really don't want to be throwing away 60 macaron shells (aka two whole trays) if something went wrong. It is also recommended you only bake one batch of macarons at a time due to incomplete heating if you use two racks of your oven. I think if you're pro enough or know your oven well enough, you can try using two pans at once but I wouldn't advise it if starting out.

3) Macaron Baking Process
The general guidelines for macarons are simple:
1. Sift almond flour and powdered sugar
2. Beat egg whites to soft/medium firm/firm/stiff peaks (I will discuss this in a bit) - at some point of this beating process, you are supposed to add in your granulated sugar. When you do this honestly doesn't matter. Just sometime before it gets to the right peak stiffness (I add it in earlier than later. You can add it in all at once or break up the additions, I don't find that making a difference either but I think splitting it up is better to "not break the meringue").
3.Fold egg whites and almond flour+powdered sugar mixture together (aka MACARONAGE process)
4. Put into piping bag/plastic bag and pipe onto silicon mat or parchment paper
5. Bake at some temperature for some amount of time.

Now if you read this recipe, you might have lots of questions. Aren't macarons supposed to be very finicky? Why is there not one straight guideline on how to make them? Well that's because they are highly specific to the baker! What works for one person will not work for another. So let's slowly take apart this generalized recipe and go over the important and not so important parts.

1. Yes you need to sift your almond flour and powdered sugar. This gets rid of lumps. However, does this need to be the first step? I've decided: no not really. IF (and only if) your almond flour is very fine - usually meaning you didn't grind it up yourself - and you know it will sift through the strainer easily, you can directly sift the powdered sugar and almond flour into your bowl of beaten egg whites. However, because I previously would grind up my own slivered almonds to make almond flour, I know that making your own almond flour means it is a lot harder to sift and therefore takes more time. In those cases, I advise sifting before hand because waiting too long to incorporate your meringue and dry ingredients can cause issues (I have yet to run into those. Fingers crossed, knock on wood!)
2. I'm going to talk about aging your egg whites in the next section because I want to focus on the stiffness of your meringue here. Some recipes/videos call for medium firm peaks, others call for firm, and some call for stiff. I personally tend to err on the side of too stiff rather than too soft, but that's just me. I do this because I read you can beat the air out of the meringue that is stiffer but you can't really "add air" to a meringue that doesn't have enough (ie. one that only has soft or medium peaks). I've seen lots of videos where people use meringues with only medium peaks however and their macarons turned out beautifully though so what does that tell me? That either way is fine! Perhaps one is more reliable than the other (I choose to think that is the stiffer peaks method) but it's up to you to experiment and figure that out.

Credits to Betty Lou Crocker

In this image above, the most right photo is labeled as a "stiff peak." I, however, beg to differ. I believe that is more of a medium firm peak. A true stiff peak (one that I aim for) looks like the photo below (credits to acup4mycake). The "peaks" shouldn't fall over like in the previous photo. Do note that the size of your "glob" of meringue does affect whether or not the peak will stand up or not (aka if you get a bigger glob with a higher peak, it's more likely to fall over because of gravity). However, if in that same meringue batter, you can get a smaller peak that stands straight up, I think you're good to go.


3. Folding your macarons is something you just sort of watch videos to learn how to do and then do your best to imitate. I don't think counting how many folds you do is very helpful because different recipes = different amounts of batter = different amount of folds needed. I suggest watching every macaron folding video out there and choosing which folding technique you like best and working with it. Or just do a combo of them all. There's no one absolute way and as long as you don't OVER fold, you're good. I actually was so scared about over folding that I under-folded my macarons the first time and they came out all bumpy! If you are having issues with hollow macarons by the way, you're probably being like me and simply folding together the egg whites and dry ingredients and you need to actually 'deflate' the batter by smearing it on the bowl. This is kind of scary the first time around because everyone's always saying don't fold too much or else your batter will get runny and here you are just smooshing down this air-filled batter that you worked on so hard to maintain. I'm just going to leave you with one macaronage video that I learned from (you can tell I really like Indulge with Mimi; she has good resources). I basically try and fold under the batter and bring all the dry ingredients to the top and then use my spatula to scrape the edge of my ball of meringue so that some "wetness" from it can touch the dry ingredients. That probably doesn't make sense but I do that over and over and then when it's all combined, I start smearing my batter across the side of the bowl to "deflate" some of the air. Like I said, watch videos!
4. Oven Temperature
Everyone's oven is different. Some people say 285 F, others say 300 F, and some even say 350 F. I started at 305 F and had my macarons totally melt (feet spread outwards - a sign of too high oven temp) so I lowered it to 295 F. This was better but macarons still browned or were hollow if I took them out earlier so I came to 285 F. I have a feeling my oven runs on the hotter side (I don't use an internal oven thermometer but highly suggest you get one to ensure your oven temperature is true to what it says. They're quite cheap anyways ~$6-8). The temperature and timing is something you will have to play around with but I think starting at 300 F might be a good starting point. If your macarons brown or your feet spread outward, lower the temperature by 5-10 degrees next time. If no feet form, you need to increase your temperature. Timing wise can range from 10-20 minutes. I currently work with 16 minutes at 285 F but I put my oven temperature to 295-300 F when preheating and then lower it to 285 F when I put the macarons in. Not sure if this makes a huge difference but I like to think it prevents my oven from reheating due to loss of heat when I open the oven to put in the macarons. This is a good trick to try if your macarons seem to crack even though you are putting the oven at a relatively low temp and doing all other preventative measure (aka smacking them to get rid of air bubbles).

5. Aging Egg Whites?
This apparently is a much discussed topic and more often than not, people say to do this. This is because it does some funky stuff with the egg white proteins which will stabilize your meringue making it firm up and make those nice beautiful peaks. I assume this has something to do with denaturing the proteins and also drying out the egg white so it has less liquid. After consulting the various online macaron gurus, websites, and discussions, I've decided it doesn't matter if you age your egg whites or not but it doesn't hurt to either. I've only come across one recipe that specifically said to use fresh egg whites and I didn't try their recipe because, despite using the french macaron style, they said their macarons didn't need to be set on the counter for one hour. Crazy and I have no idea how that works but they definitely had nice looking macarons! Anyways, if you wish to age your egg whites, you can split the egg yolk and meringue 1-5 days before (after 5 days, your egg whites might go bad) and leave them in a container either in the fridge or counter top. I've never left mine on the counter top for fear something might go wrong with them (I live in America where we put our eggs in the fridge; I do know elsewhere people just leave their eggs out which is crazy to me but apparently is due to differences in the processing of the eggs? Who knows). I've heard that the container should have holes in it (ie. use saran wrap and poke some holes) but I'm not too fussed; like I said, aging your egg whites doesn't make or break your macarons. I've made macarons with aged and non-aged egg whites. If you're worried about your meringue not stabilizing (or you've had issues getting stiff peaks), you need to make sure your bowl is clean (wipe it down with vinegar or lemon juice if it's been used for other cooking adventures involving oil) and try adding a pinch of cream of tartar or salt right when you start beating your egg whites. I do find that my egg whites stiffen up more quickly when they're at room temperature so this IS one thing I recommend. If you're taking a egg right out of the fridge, put it in a cup or bowl of warm-hot water while you go measure out the rest of your ingredients (about 5 minutes). If you've already pre-split your egg white and yolk, just leave it on the counter for 20 minutes (but that usually is too long for me so I just go ahead and use it "cold").
6. Troubleshooting
Last but not least, here are a few things I don't think enough people talk about so I wanted to cover them here:
- Double stacking baking pans
I read about this a few times but didn't think it was a huge deal. I started with only one baking pan and had enough good macarons turning out in each batch to think that one baking pan was good enough (I usually had 2-4 out of 20 macaron shells that cracked). My baking sheets are (I assume) good quality ones also so I didn't think double stacking would help much. Plus who knew what adding a second pan would do to my baking time or temperature? But, when I had two completely failed batches of macarons (cracked shells) without any changes to my recipe or technique (well besides using parchment paper but that's not supposed to affect your macarons!), I decided to give it a go (what else did I have to lose?). The effect was significant and I'm disappointed I didn't start doing this sooner. Before double stacking my pans, my 2-4 cracked macarons were always piped in the same area so I assumed this was a "heat pocket" area of my oven. However, because double stacking baking sheets (aka using two baking pans instead of one) apparently conducts the heat better, this eliminates the issue of heat pockets. And sure enough, my batches since double stacking my pans have all had ZERO cracked macarons! Woohoo! So I am now a converted advocate of double stacking pans.

A batch of my beautiful no crack animal shaped macarons :)

- Wrinkly macaron shells
This happened to me once and I am still puzzled why. I was trying to make bear shaped macarons on parchment paper and it was raining outside (see next trouble shooting point on humidity). As you can see in the photos below, the macaron shell looks wrinkled like a thin sheet of paper (and there are cracks!). If you look carefully, the edges of the macarons (at the feet) are slightly browned meaning I baked them for too long. I've tried troubleshooting what might be the cause for this but it seems the general answer is you either took your macarons out of the oven too quickly or you didn't let a skin form. Now I made sure that a skin was formed on all my macarons before putting them in so unless humidity affects macarons in another way, I don't think it was the rain. However, when I checked my macarons at the 4-5 minute mark (total baking time 16 minutes at 285 F), they were cracking so I opened the door quite a bit before closing it quickly. I think this gust of cold air may have contributed to the macarons crinkling but I can't say for certain. So as you can see, I don't have a good answer for wrinkly macarons either but they don't seem to be a common thing so hopefully you don't find yourself in this dilemma. I'm leaning towards the answer being that my macarons cracked and wrinkled because I didn't tap them enough and that random gust of cold air. Perhaps the humidity made my skin that formed weak but I do recall that when I touched them, I was surprised by how firm they felt. If you have a better answer to why this happened, please leave a comment below!

-Weather/humidity/environment
Apparently this plays a pretty large role in making your macarons. If the area you live in is too wet or humid, the macarons will have a harder time drying, thus making it harder (if not impossible) to form a shell. This can be circumvented by running a range-hood fan (aka the fans above a stove) and/or using a fan on light speed to blow at the macarons gently to dry them. Now I've baked macarons twice in the rain and all my macarons in each batch cracked. However, I was also using parchment paper (vs a silicone mat which I normally use) and not double stacking my pans. I had also checked and there was definitely a skin formed so not 100% sure that the humidity was the factor or if it was something else. I have baked with parchment paper since then WITH double stacked pans in normal weather conditions and had 100% success rate so I'll leave it up to you to decide how large of a role weather plays.
- Overmixed or spread out badder
No one talks about how you can SAVE these but I've found a way (hoozah!). It's not entirely foolproof but works most of the time! If you know your macaron batter is too liquidy, start by piping REALLY tiny circles. They will spread so pipe less than you think is okay (I'd say maybe a dollop the size of a US 25 cent quarter) because even if it's too little, you can add more. Now what if you put too much or your batter just totally spread? Let your macarons sit for about 15 minutes so a thin shell can form. Then take a circular cookie cutter or a small cup with the circumference you desire and place it on your macaron. Wipe away whatever excess macaron batter there is outside of your circle and remove the cutter. You should have a normal sized macaron that will hold its shape. If your batter is still too liquidy and spreads out after you've tried fixing, wait another 15 minutes before repeating. Make sure that you give enough time after fixing a macaron via this method (~15-20 minutes) to form a skin around the edges because even if the tops are dry but you just scraped the sides, the sides wont have a skin and will likely crack or do something weird in the oven when you bake it. This technique also works well if you have a silicone macaron mat that actually has raised circle spots to place your macarons as this acts as a guide.
 
I suggest (if you haven't already) you go check out these pages if you are troubleshooting basic issues These are the web pages I looked at when I first started a few months ago and still look at today when something goes wrong.

• Food Nouveau - covers the basis really well
• ChocoParis - my favorite and probably most comprehensive troubleshooting page; so many people have posted questions and gotten answers so you're bound to find your problem
• Not So Humble Pie (aka Ms. Humble) - great for trouble shooting
• Zumbo - A nice clean cut problem & answer page
• Indulge with Mimi - helpful photos included, not the most complete troubleshooting page however

I know this was a really long post but hopefully you found some answers to any questions or concerns you've had about macarons. Macarons are beautiful little desserts when you get them right but know that they taste good no matter how they look so have a ready line-up of friends to eat your "failed" batches that don't meet the photoshoot cut!

The Best (and cheapest!) Way to Clean Your Makeup Brushes

I'm not going to babble too much and get straight into the post. It's pretty common knowledge that makeup brushes need to be washed - especially face makeup brushes. You don't want bacteria building up and if you're doing makeup on other people, you don't want their face oils and germs on the brush when you use it next right? Same goes with eye brushes although the concern is more that when you use different colors, you'll have residual from the old shade you used and well, that's no good if you've got black shadow mixing with your highlight. So yes it's clear that makeup brushes need to be washed. But using what?!

Store bought cleansing solutions are expensive aren't they? So most people have come to realize that well... olive oil is great at removing makeup from the face and doesn't clog pores. And dish washer soap is supposed to kill 99.999% of bacteria. SO.. if you take the two and mix them together, you should get the perfect makeup cleansing mixture right? CORRECT! I think that's also pretty common knowledge (I think all the Youtube makeup gurus I watch use this solution). It's cheap (well olive oil can be pricey but it's def worth it) and effective. I've used it since I started getting into makeup and have never had any issues. However..the only one problem is really getting out ALL the makeup from some of my denser brushes (ie. the Sigma F80 kabuki brush). Sometimes the foundation really gets stuck in and even after multiple scrubs on my hand, I find there is still residual foundation spots left on the brush. I know other people have had this problem because Sigma designed a tool to help with this: a brush cleaning glove! It has ridges and bumps that are supposed to help you "deep clean" all your brushes quickly and efficiently.

I think it's a cool idea especially if you have a ton of brushes.. However, for someone like me who only needs to wash a few (5-7) brushes every so often, $39 is a pretty steep price. So I discovered my own tool to help me deep clean and it's something I think most people will have! A ginger grater! Now I know what you're thinking (okay well I don't) but does it seem weird? Well a ginger grater also has little small raised bumps to help you grate a ginger into tiny shreds of pieces. It's not too sharp like a knife or a cheese grater, and it's on a flat surface (like the one shown below).

It's definitely improved the cleanliness of my brushes and speed of the whole process so I thought I'd share it with all of you. All you have to do is move your brush up and down or in circular motions and you'll see all the pigment and gunk from your makeup foaming up off your brush. I do this as many times until the soap bubbles are clear or when I rinse the brush under water and wring it out, the liquid drainage is clear.

To dry my brushes, I use a dry and clean dish towel or hair towel and lay it vertically. I roll up one edge so that it creates a raised roll that I can prop my brushes against so that they lay at a downward slant to promote the drainage of water as they dry. This is important to prevent the bristles in your brushes from falling out. In the below photo they're propped upward because I had just dipped them in my oil+detergent mixture. They're currently propped the opposite way since I just finished cleaning them. I like to use a hair towel because they're long enough to roll up and still have extra towel room to cover my brushes when they're drying to prevent dust or random stuff falling on them and dirtying them (if that makes sense)

I hope this post was somewhat useful for you and please give it a go! It might seem weird at first but it's quite effective! If you have any questions, feel free to leave them down below!

Baking with Tammy: How to Make Cookie Stamps and USE them! (Cookie Recipe included)

Today I want to share with you how to make cookie stamps and the best type of cookie recipe I've found to use them on. If you don't know, cookie stamps are literally stamps (like the ones you would dip in ink) except you use them on cookies. They're generally made out of plastic and can be found at most places - craft stores, grocery stores, etc. The hard part is finding one with a design you want! Ebay has a great selection and I actually purchased this letter cookie stamp for super cheap and it works perfectly well. But of course, sometimes you want to make your own special design right? For me, it's Game of Thrones cookie stamps. Hopefully you all know what that is, but if not, Game of Thrones is a TV show on HBO and it's kind of.. intense (ie. blood and lots of nude people) but it's a really great show (story line wise). I've been reading the books (half way through the latest one!) and I'm loving it. But anyways, I'm part of a school club and we're having a bake sale so we decided to make it Game of Thrones themed so I needed cookie stamps to make cookies with the House symbols engraved (or stamped) onto them. That being said, on Etsy, someone IS selling Game of Thrones (as well as some other themed) cookie stamps but they were more than $10 each and would be shipped from Australia, so with my small budget and lack of time, I decided to try and make them myself.

I looked up a ton of cookie stamp tutorials and found this page to be the most useful and was the one I followed. The author is pretty vague about their recipe that they used to make the salt-dough, which is what I used to make my cookie stamps. You can use clay, which was my original plan, but the author, and from what other people online were saying, said it might not be safe even if the clay is said to be non-toxic. Honestly, I don't know but I thought it wouldn't hurt to try using salt-dough and it worked out fine. The webpage recipe calls for "one part hot water, one part salt and two parts plain all-purpose flour". I also looked up other recipes for salt dough and they were all about the same so I ended up using this one. A tip that I think is an obvious one, but still a good one to mention, is to start off with less if you're not sure. I mean especially for me trying out the cookie recipes, I'm glad I wasn't making giant batches because if they didn't turn out well, well then I'd be the one eating all the cookies which, as much as I love my cookies, would not be a good thing. Or I'd have to throw them away which my sister does when she isn't happy with her baking results but I can never do that. Hm maybe that's why I'm so much fatter than my sister (LOL). Ok back on the topic, what I used to make my salt dough was:

• 1/4 cup of hot water
• 1/4 cup of salt
• 1/2 cup of all-purpose

That gave me just enough to make 5 cookie stamps as shown below. The salt dough was great, way better than cookie recipes - probably because there's no butter. But anyways it was totally not sticky and easy to roll out. It takes a while to harden completely so you have a lot of time to mess up (like me) or to spend forever making a design (also like me). I had to free draw out all of the designs and I used a combination of tooth picks and pencils. If you're into nail art and have dotting tools, I think those would be really great too (I didn't have mine at the time). Free-hand drawing is super hard but my mom did come up with the idea to use saran wrap and trace out the designs onto the saran wrap using sharpie and then put the saran wrap over the salt-dough and sort of poke holes to get the basic outline of the design into the dough. Then we removed the saran wrap and finished tracing/filling in the gaps of the design on the salt dough. It wasn't a perfect method but it did work a bit so if you're struggling, you can give that method a shot. Once you're satisfied with your designs (and make sure you make them deep enough with sharp defined edges or else the designs will not stamp into the cookies very well), you cut them out. I used a circular glass cup from my local Japanese Daiso (cheap dollar store basically) and it worked perfect. That's also what I used to cut out my cookies, which you'll see later. I left my salt-dough cookie stamps to dry for about a day and a half (overnight) and then baked them at 275 for who knows how long. The webpage I was looking out wasn't specific about the temperature or time for baking them but other sites said about that temperature and I started off with 20 minutes. I flipped them over and then did another 10 but they still didn't feel ready so then I did another 20. I would keep a good eye on them if you're worried especially since what I'm giving you isn't an exact baking time.

Now once I had my cookie stamps all baked and hardened, I set off to find the perfect cookies for stamping. Since I've done cookie cutting before, I know that cookies spread when you bake them so I wanted to find a recipe that spread the least and would hold my design the best. Looking back at the page that I got my salt-dough recipe from, the author links you to this sugar cookie recipe and says they just didn't add baking powder. I didn't use that recipe though because I forgot about it and first tried this sugar cookie recipe from Allrecipes. I had a lot of trouble with it, but the one thing I like about Allrecipes is that you adjust the measurements to change the serving size to how you like. That original recipe makes 60 cookies and since I was just trying it out, I changed it to only 10. I'm glad I did because it definitely wasn't the recipe for me. Not that it was bad because hey, there are so many reviews on that recipe saying how good it is but for me, I'm not sure what I did wrong but I left it in the fridge for over 6 hours and when I came back and tried to roll it out, it was way too sticky. So I used powdered sugar and flour to try and make it firm enough to roll out and stamp. I didn't use precise measurements or anything like exact weight or exact leveling off the flour, but I never do and usually my stuff turns out fine LOL but perhaps that's why this recipe didn't work for me. Nevertheless, the cookies did taste good but they just didn't hold the design very well. As you can see from the picture, the design is there, but it's faint. That picture is also of one of the better cookies that turned out. Some of the other ones just completely did not show up. I should mention that I didn't leave out the baking powder and that most likely contributed to the rising/spreading of my cookies.

So the next recipe I used, and had successful results, is from Food Network. This recipe is a shortbread recipe because after my fail with the first sugar cookies, I decided to look up some tips on how to prevent the design from fading. From what I read, most people recommended using a recipe without baking soda or leaveners which cause the cookie to rise. Many other sites also recommended shortbread cookies rather than sugar cookies so that's how I stumbled upon the Foodnetwork shortbread recipe. The recipe said it makes 20 cookies but called for 3 STICKS (I know it says 3/4 lbs which is important because some people in the reviews said they had thought it was 3/4 cup which is WAY less butter haha) of butter and I didn't exactly want to use that much butter on a recipe I'd never tried. So I chose to 1/3 the entire recipe allowing me to only use  1 stick of butter, equivalent to 1/2 cup of butter. These are the measurements I used:

• 1 stick of butter (ie. 1/2 cup)
• 1/3 cup of white sugar
• 1/3 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1.17 cups of flour
• 1/12 tsp salt

Now as you can see, some of the measurements (aka the flour and salt) are a bit wonky. But like I said earlier, I'm never too precise when baking (which I know isn't a good thing) and since I'm lazy about washing dishes, I just re-used my 1/3 cup that I had used for the white sugar and did 3 scoops of flour (=1 cup) leveled off by shaking the cup so that it was about 1/3.  Before I ramble on further, I did follow the instructions from the Food Network recipe meaning I did this:

1. Cream butter and sugar 
1. I say cream meaning I used my sister's kitchen aid and used the white paddle mixer instead of the standard stainless steal whisk. Most people say not to over do this step so I just had it on low and continued to mix it about 20 seconds after the butter and sugar had came together. My butter probably wasn't at room temperature since I had taken it out of the fridge while I got the rest of my ingredients so it was probably only out of the fridge for about a minute.
2. Add in vanilla extract and mix.
1. I mixed for about 20 seconds before moving on to the next step
3. Add flour and salt

1. Like I mentioned earlier, I used my 1/3 cup from the sugar measurement and added in the flour in thirds while mixing. Because a lot of people in the reviews had said the dough had been too crumbly, I wanted to make sure each flour addition mixed together before adding the next spoonful of flour so that I didn't add too much flour. I'm not sure if it made a difference to add it in in thirds rather than all at once, but after my 3 1/3 cup spoonfuls, I added a little (about half a tablespoon) more of flour and let it mix together. I then used a rubber scraper spoon to mix in any flour on the sides of the bowl and it easily formed a nice dough ball.
2. I want to mention that the dough wasn't crumbly or sticky at all. It was seriously perfect. A little oily feeling from the butter but it didn't stick to my hands at all. It was kind of awesome *__* 
3. Oh and another side note, the original recipe says to mix the flour and salt together in a bowl before adding but obvi, lazy me didn't do that and just sprinkled (hey that's like what 1/12 a teaspoon is right?) a dash of salt in with my second addition of flour. 
4. Shape dough into ball, roll out, stamp, and cut!

• At this step, I split my dough in half and rolled out one half and put the other half in the fridge. The original recipe says to roll out the dough and put it in the fridge for half an hour but many people said they hadn't needed to do that and my dough felt perfectly fine so I though it'd try half without putting it in the fridge and both of them worked out fine.
• Note, I rolled my dough to about 1 cm thick. I did it a little thicker (about 1.5) in the beginning because using my stamps, I would press down so the dough would thin out.
• A tip I found while researching is to roll your dough out on your parchment paper so that you don't have to ruin the cookies by transferring them from wherever you rolled them, to your cookie sheet. By rolling them on the parchment paper and stamping and cutting them there, I could just take the parchment paper and plop it on the cookie sheet and bake. I would HIGHLY suggest doing this because, especially for my thinner cookies, when I tried to pick them up because they were too close to another cookie I had stamped, they would slightly deform.

     5. Bake until edges start browning at 350 F.

• I know, annoying, I'm not giving you an exact time right? But that's because the original recipe calls for 20-25 minutes but I was using a toaster oven and only baking 4-5 cookies at a time (I made 3 batches) so I only baked my cookies for 10 minutes, 11 minutes, and 12 minutes (respectively for each batch). I was keeping an eye on my cookies and they weren't even browning at the edges very much so I probably could have kept them in longer. 

Okay I think that's a detailed enough instruction guide on how I got my cookies to turn out nicely. Some other tips I want to mention that really helped me get nice cookies were:

Finished result~! Super happy with them :) As you can tell, the letter stamped cookies are definitely more prominent but I think my cookie stamps fared pretty well for what I was expecting.

• Lightly flour your cookie stamps before stamping. I made the mistake of not doing that for the first cookie I stamped using the shortbread recipe and the dough totally stuck to it so I had to like scrape/peel it off. Flouring helps SO MUCH. I can not stress that. I filled up my 1/3 measuring cup with a little bit of flour and would use that to sprinkle and rub onto my stamps. I then tapped off the excess on my surface (aka cutting board lol). Some people also use powdered sugar instead of flour.
• Make sure your oven is properly heated to the right temperature. I read this helps prevent spreading if it's at the right temperature the moment you put in the cookies. Also don't open the door to peak at them, apparently this ruins them. Now I'm not a super expert but I follow those two rules and my cookies didn't spread and turned out great so it doesn't hurt right?
• I would suggest putting some the dough you're not using in the fridge if you can. Since I was using my letter stamper, it actually took me some time to form out my letters and put them into the bar to stamp so I would put the dough I wasn't working with in the fridge while I was stamping out a portion of the rolled out dough. While the dough isn't sticky, it does get a little mushy (not like banana mushy!) and soft so putting it in the fridge doesn't hurt in my opinion.
• For sugar cookies, people say to stamp & cut your cookies and then leave them in the fridge before baking. I tried that with my original recipe and I don't think it did much. I didn't do it for my shortbread cookie recipe and they were fine. Obviously that could be due to differences in the ingredients I used and it makes sense to put them in the fridge before you bake them so they don't spread as much BUT for the shortbread recipe I used, I think you'll be fine if you don't do this :)

So that's it for this incredibly long post. Let me know if you try out this recipe or if you have any other cookie recipes that worked for your cookie stamps. I hope this advice/my notes help you along. Definitely go read up some other sites and other people's reviews because everyone has a different kitchen (ie. oven, temperature, climate, butter softness levels) and I'm sure all of this factors in to whether or not you have a successful result. So just try little batches so that you can adjust ingredients or methods if the first attempt doesn't work out and don't give up! Good luck and have fun baking~!

Get the [Nail] Look: Vintage Roses

Once again, based on a Pinterest inspiration photo, I have tried out this vintage looking floral nail look. Wow that was a mouthful. 

I loved how class it looked from the polka dots to the black and white stripes to the addition of that one plain red nail. Everything about this look is PERFECT to the t (is that even the right saying?) Anyways, moving on, here's my rendition of the look :)

Obviously not as good but hey I liked it. I'm working on filing my nails to get that square shape but in the photo,this person's nails were actually somewhat rounded (FINALLY!) so i think that made my nails match the photo even more. I used my dotting tools I got from Ebay to make the polka dots and the flowers but definitely using the back of a toothpick or a bobby pin will work fine (trust me I've done that!).

I used the following nail polishes
-Orly White French Tips Nail Polish
-LA Colors Art Deco in Black
-Forever 21 Nail Polish in Tomato
-Revlon Colorstay Nail Enamel in Cafe Pink
-Essie in Mojito Madness

Hope you enjoy and let me know if you want to see like actual step by step instructions. I've been thinking about it but usually when I'm painting my nails, I get so into it and having to take pictures each step seems kind of a hassle =3= Plus I don't have a tripod or anything with me so having to take the photos by myself would definitely be a struggle haha. But I'm sure it'd be more helpful so next time I might do picture step by step tutorials!

Manicure Monday x Get the [Nail] Look: It's Gold, Baby!

Hey everyone! I decided to do another "Get the [Nail] Look" because Pinterest just has so many amazing inspiration nail looks so I might as well show all of you wondering how to get similar nail looks! This week's is pretty simple because I was feeling a little lazy but I love how elegant it still looks. I didn't have the right shade of coral with me (ugh there are just too many shades of pink and coral and red that I don't have!) but what I used seemed to work fine enough.

The taupe I ended up using was a lot more cool toned and next time I think I'll use another one of my taupe polishes that comes off more brown and warmer like in the photo. However, since I didn't have a coral and used a pink color, I think the cool toned taupe looked just as nice.

Nail Polishes used:
-Revlon Colorstay Nail Enamel in Cafe Pink
-Milani Jewel FX Nail Lacquer in Gold 531
-L'Oreal Paris Colour Riche Nail Color Nude Privee Collection in It's Now or Never
-OPI Spotlight on Glitter Nail Lacquer in I Reached My Gold

I actually used another gold glitter polish which is much finer than the Milani nail polish (which you can tell in the photos) and layered the OPI glitter top coat over it to create a more dimensional effect. However, the finer gold glitter polish I used is by Covergirl and it's super old because it was before they game out with the square shaped nail polishes that they have now and I can't seem to find it online so yea :( But most brands carry a gold glitter polish so it shouldn't be too hard to find a replacement if you don't want to use the Milani one (which is a much larger glitter particle size but definitely still awesome).

I am seriously in need of a coral nail polish so if you guys have any suggestions on an amazing coral color (like the one in that picture), please let me know! :) Or send me pictures of looks you want me to recreate!

Get the [Nail] Look: Flower Tips

So lately I've taken to Pintrest for nail look ideas and I came across this one that I was absolutely in love with this one nail look (shown below) that I kept seeing on literally everyone's board!

I loved this look so much that I decided to try and recreate it. I couldn't find the right pink, and I still can't! So if you know what polish looks similar to the pink in that picture, PLEASE let me know down in the comments below because I literally spent an hour searching up very pastel pink nail polish and swatch trying to find the perfect color. I ended up giving up because I couldn't find any color close enough and just stuck to a very light pastel pink that I had. It's a bit too light for my liking but I'm pretty happy with the end result!

I used the following nail polishes (shown in order from left to right):
-Sinful Colors Nail Polish in Easy Going
-Essie Nail Color in Mojito Madness
-Revlon Colorstay Nail Enamel in Cafe Pink
-Orly White French Tips Nail Polish
-Essie Nail Color in Camera (discontinued)

Although the bright red nail polish by Essie is discontinued, you can use any sort of red-pink nail polish that would blend well with the pink. Or you can totally make this look your own and choose a different flower color like yellow roses or even blue roses if you're feeling creative ;D

Steps:
1. Paint base coat with Easy Going by Sinful Colors. This polish can be pretty streaky so you need at least two if not three coats. Wait for it to completely dry. Be patient!
2. On a scratch piece of paper, put a drop of the white (Orly French Tips), pink (Revlon Cafe Pink), and red-pink nail polish (Essie Camera) so that they're all touching. Using a rounded tip (ie. a dotting tool or the knob of a bobby pin), swirl right in the middle where all the colors meet so that your rounded tip has a bit of all colors.
3. In a C or circular shaped motion, start drawing the first petal of your rose. Continue on going towards the center. Paint about three roses per nail. (Try not to crowd them as much as I did so leave some extra space in between). Let dry.
4. Add the leaves! Using a green polish (Essie Mojito Madness) and a tooth pick, create leaf like structures.
5. Let it all sit a bit before adding a top coat. I used Seche Vite as usual which works for not completely dried polish but it depends on what top coat you are using. Be careful that your design isn't so wet that it smears when you add the top coat.
6. Finished~! Make sure to take a picture for instagram and tag me (@creamydinner) ^__^

Simple 3 Color Winter Nails

Because my exams are finally over, I've been able to paint my nails and oh my, how I've missed this simple luxury. Please don't mind the dryness of my nails (yes I know extremely unflattering but the winter cold air has left in moisture) and focus on the design instead ;D I took my inspiration from a design I saw on Pinterest but switched the colors around . I like the mix of the emerald green and silver. It's a bit festive and actually would have been more perfect before Christmas but nevertheless, I think this is still perfect for the winter weather. My nail painting skills are a bit rusty, having not painted them for so long now, but this look was so simple and easy to do that it was pretty foolproof.

 

The three nail polishes I used were:
-Revlon Matte Suede in Emerald City
-Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Showtime (I think this is discontinued which is a shame because it's so pretty and I've used it for so long)
-Orly French Tip (I really need another white nail polish because this one is getting goopy!)

The overall nail look was really quick and easy to do. I hope to be doing more nail designs in my free time so please look forward to those and send me any styles or designs you want me to attempt (easy ones please haha!)

Manicure Monday: Alice in Wonderland Inspired Nail Art

Happy almost Christmas~! As much as I love the holiday season and painting my nails in the Christmas spirit, I decided to do something different with my sister's nails the other day and wanted to share it with you all for Manicure Monday. Because my sister loves Alice in Wonderland so much, we decided to go with that theme for her nails which constituted pretty bows, gold accented designs, and just basically an overall girly theme. We went blue as the main color because it's my sister's favorite color and also because Alice wears a blue and white dress throughout the movie so we thought it best appropriate. Part of our inspiration also came from another Alice in Wonderland nail design which you can easily find if you just Google "Alice in Wonderland nail art" so you can see where we got the color and some pattern designs from there.

I did all the nail art with either a toothpick or my white nail art deco nail polish which has a special thin tip made for drawing lines/for nail art (as the name so appropriately states) but overall the designs are all pretty simple and easy enough to do. I actually used the toothpick to trace out lines before filling them in with a normal nail polish (like in the case of the white diamond or the white clock on my sister's ring finger and thumb respectively) and for the lace design. Toothpicks are probably one of the best "at-home" nail tools you can use because they're so useful! I used them to pick up the nail gems in addition to using them to create the designs.

I purchased the gold chain from my local Daiso which is sort of like a Japanese dollar store except everything is usually $1.50 unless otherwise stated. It comes in a long chain which you can cut to your liking with scissors. I'm pretty sure you can find it on Ebay for less than a dollar which is also about the same price as the nail gems I used which came in a wheel with multiple colors similar to this. I also added on some cute stickers I got from China which you can also purchase on Ebay for super cheap :)

For the nail polishes, I used..
-Sky Blue: Revlon Core Nail Blue Lagoon
-Pastel Baby Blue: Barry M Gelly Nail Paint Huckleberry 19
-White: Orly Nail Polish White Tips #42001
-Black: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Nail Color 370 Black Out
-White Nail Art: L.A. Colors Art Deco Nail Art 901 White

And as usual, I topped with Seche Vite top coat to seal everything in. I think it was especially important this time because I needed to make sure none of the 3-D things would fall off like the rose or the gold chain. 

Let me know what you think and if you have any nail design requests, just leave them in the comments below~! Hope you all have a wonderful holiday break and spend lots of time with your family! ^__^