Valentine's Day Cookies

This year for Valentine's Day, I decided to be ambitious and volunteer to send in sugar cookies for Ellie's class party at school.  I'm sure her teacher didn't mean for me to make them (and honestly I have nothing against those thick, soft sugar cookies at the store... they are delicious), but I've been having the itch to use my creative side lately but haven't had much of an outlet.  So, I made my first real attempt at "fancy" sugar cookies.

First I did a "trial run" the weekend before Valentine's Day, making sure the actual cookies turned out well, and making sure I knew how to work the royal icing.  Here's my batch from the first attempt.  I think they turned out pretty well!  I made another large batch and let the kids and Garrett get in on the action next:

Garrett was actually really good!  He made these next two:

And then here was my final batch for the party.  They aren't perfect, but I'm still a beginner so there's that.  I'm sure those second graders really appreciated all my hard work (haha).  I don't usually go "above and beyond", especially for elementary parties, but this was really fun and I'm excited to make more sometime soon.  I just need to buy more cookie cutters!

When we lived in Florida, one of my friends in the ward started making these sugar cookies with royal icing, and she started having "cookie parties", basically a girls' night at her house where everyone would just decorate cookies and chat.  Sadly, I never made it to a party, but I'm totally going to steal the idea and attempt to have a cookie party at my house one of these days.  I really need to reach out and make some friends here.