This week I'm celebrating the launch of my new collection of kids wall art entitled Cosmos. The series is about space, robots and loving someone to the moon and back.  Well, on that trip of love from here to the rock in the sky, you best take some provisions.  Forget the dried astronaut food, I'm talking cookies!  What if they were meteor cookies...ooooohhhh?

Here's a simple way to turn any cookie recipe into ones that look like meteors.  Think about it, a meteor shower of cookies, you can't get any more deliciously spaced out than that! 

The secret is to incorporate chocolate rocks.  But, unlike chocolate chips, if you mix them in only a part of them will show and the effect won't be as obvious.

You could alter any cookie recipe for this.  Keep in mind that the chocolate rocks are similar to M&M's so you'll want to expect that crunch.  For this post I am making the classic Tollhouse cookie recipe and have simply left out the chips.  I'd suggest choosing a cookie that's dark in color so you only have to use a minimal amount of food coloring. 

First step is to make the cookie batter according to your recipe.  Once it's mixed, add in black food coloring to override the cookies color.  Fold it in thoroughly.  The second step is to load your cookie sheet with dollops of dough.   I separated the chocolate rocks into colors.
Now that your dollops are placed you'll need to pile on the chocolate rocks.  They will settle and spread out as the dough cooks.  Be sure to place some around the edge of the dough.  Then bake the cookies according to your recipe.

Allow the cookies to cool.  In a bowl add hot water into the a cup of confectioners sugar.  Mix until it becomes smooth and free of sugar clumps.  You'll want to add enough water to make the mixture thin enough to enable brushing it on.  Holding the brush at a steep angle and simply dry brush across the surface in a couple directions to hit and highlight the texture and rocks.  Let the sugar mixture dry. 

My favorite color ended up being the turquoise blue.  They gave the cookies that gem stone look. 

The chocolate rocks look like well,.... like rocks.   I imagine you could try this technique matching the rock colors to colored cookie dough.  Yellow on yellow, red on red would be very space like.  If you try a variation let me know how it goes and send over a photo I'll add it to the post.  -Enjoy!

I needed a few New Years Eve poppers to display as a centerpiece, so I scraped up some of my holiday craft left overs and cranked up the computer.  Rather than have to adorn them with sequins, go glitter crazy and go through great efforts to use a  lot of fabric colors and textures, I scanned the ingredients and printed them.  The prints were super easy to cut up, fold, fan and glue.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that stuff like beads, glitter, tinsel ribbon and glass crystals were added to finish them off.

Prior to tying them off you could fill them with candy, glitter or encouraging notes for the new year.   If you're like me.... hiding treats in these might prevent bad snacking.  After all the New Years Resolutions start in less than a week. {yikes}

So don't recycle those empty  wrapping paper tubes and download yourself a set of the papers below.      

One of my greatest sources of inspiration and joy are my two children.  Although they are technically no longer children but young adults, and very amazing ones at that.  My son, whom defines himself as a creative, is always challenging me to see through his eyes.   He has a great eye for what's important, interesting and meaningful to a generation that I'm purely an observer of due to the age difference.

   This year marks an important milestone for him, as he graduates from COLLEGE.  He's a student at University of Oregon, in Eugene, Oregon.

Four years ago we put together a fun high school graduation party for him that I intended to post about.  Well, here we are four years later and it never quit appeared on the blog.    So to reminisce and enjoy it all again here's the details of that special day.

The goal of the  party was to acknowledge and celebrate his accomplishments in high school and build excitement for his college experience.   One of the very basic things I started with was working out some common ground between the two school's color palettes.  His high school colors were cardinal and gold and his college was green and yellow.  So I tweaked both into my preferred color palette of vintage look colors.  We were now working with burgundy reds, ochre yellows and olivey greens mixed with the neutrals of  parchment, kraft and burlap.

I can't take credit for the concept but I can take credit for the execution of the little suitcase pictured.  His school asked that we create a box keepsake and fill it with insightful and inspirational items, quotes and sentiment.  I covered his in stickers I created that represent many of the stages in his academic journey.  Many were logos I already had on hand from events and projects I had a design hand in through the years.

The box itself contained items that were adorned with small kraft tags.  On each tag we came up with short explanation as to why we chose the item.    Some of the items were toys he had as a boy.

The handsome heads you see are blow ups of my son's face.  We used them as markers to reserve the family and friends seats at graduation.   They we fun to wave in the air during the moments we could get noisy and revel.

At the house I used a lot of props, which as a prop hoarder it wasn't too difficult to do.  Globes, encyclopedias , typewriters, flash cards, things with letters and ones that reflect the 12 in 2012.  A hand painted burlap pennant streamer spans our front porch welcoming guests through the garden.

Small vignettes of photos and props were placed throughout the house.  I used books to create fun shapes and opportunities to stage items.  While its something we don't showcase year round the digital photo frame was a great addition to the displays.  Having k-12 photographs scrolling through time was enjoyed by our guests.

Having a very large backyard gives us many opportunities for merry making.  The problem often becomes scale.  How to make a party look intimate and special on such a large scale is often the issue.  To remedy some of that I strung very long strands of lights to bring the "ceiling" down a little and offer light as the evening waned past sunset.  The combination of clear bulbs and paper lanterns were very handsome.

In the revised color palette, collections of school logo cutouts, paper goods and decorative details bring it all together.   I found some amazing natural leaf made plates that had great texture.  They were combined with the more graphic striped traditional party plates.

A multi layered dimensional height display of suitcases, manipulated books and other props made for a perfect dessert table.  Letters and numbers were cut using my silhouette machine.

Now, we're in the planning stages of his college graduation.  I might revisit some of these props and ideas to create a new but familiar and welcomed look.  Hopefully, I will be good about posting those before another four years passes.

I hope you find a few things inspiring or just fun to look at.  Shoot me over any questions or sentiments for the graduate.  I look forward to your thoughts...
Best,
Aaron
 

I've taken the liberty to host the photos above on Pinterest for your pinning!   Be sure to follow me.