My Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies

I have made many made-from-scratch goodies before, but I have never made cookies before, in this case, sugar cookies (actually, I take that back...I have made red velvet cookies for Christmas before). I think the reason why I haven't is because my daughter is the cookie expert in our home. They're her thing, and I did not want to take from that. HOWEVER, I have a friend who makes - and decorates- holiday cookies. She makes them really nice and pretty, and I badly wanted to do some, myself. Luckily for me, she agreed to teach me, and boy did I learn a lot from her! I will forever be thankful for the time and energy she spent on that.

So, without further ado, here are my first-ever attempt at making and decorating cookies, just in time for Valentine's day.

creaming the butter and sugar...

if you think the dough looks somewhat dry, that is because this one is...i followed this recipe to a tee, which my friend warned me was a bit off, and she was right. i made a second batch with slightly modified measurements...and, that came out really good!

this is the dough from the second batch...

still, this is the same dry dough from the first batch...

but, as you can see, this dough is much better...

cookies, baked and ready to be decorated..

now, making the Royal Icing...

in the end, four colors were used to decorate the cookies, with two different kinds of icings...these ones are slightly stiffer for piping edges...

and these ones are slightly runnier for flooding..

so, after 2 days of prepping everything, I was finally ready to do some decorating...the fun could finally begin!

and, voila!!!! aren't they pretty?? my favorite ones are the XO in pink, white and black..

I made quite a bit that I had my husband and kids, and myself, hand them out to friends...and they were happy to get some. ☺