Cookie decorating... fun?

In Glenn's watercolour classes he always talked about 'the three variables' - that being: the amount of water in the brush, the amount of paint in the brush, and the wetness of the paper. I was thinking about this while decorating sugar cookies this Thanksgiving weekend because the ratio of liquid to icing sugar is key. The surface of the cookie isn't a factor as it stays the same (dry), unless icing is being layered onto icing.

Enough time lapses between my decorating efforts for me to forget that it's not so easy. I am not even sure it's fun! But one shouldn't expect great results with little effort.

I got a pack of four food colours from the grocery store and pondered which ones to mix to get autumn leaf colours. Red and yellow for orange. I could get brown by mixing red, yellow and blue. Then I went to a decorating store to see what they had and the saleslady said, "The best way to get brown is to start with chocolate." Ha! Of course. Boy, did I feel silly. She said black could be added for a darker brown.

The results weren't as elegant as I'd hoped but I think the cookies look fairly festive.

My favourite cookie was this maple leaf, while Glenn's was the moon. You can see that I wasn't very good at staying within the lines, but I'm just in cookie-decorating kindergarten. :-)