Tetris Cookies

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved playing Tetris on my GameBoy. Just the word "Tetris" gets that electronic Russian music in my head all over again like an '80s earworm. It's hard not to like Tetris. It's problem solving, creative thinking, and stress management for adults and just plain fun for kids. My husband had a game night at his work and I wanted to contribute something, so when I saw these Tetris cookies by PSHeart, I thought they were perfect! I doubled my recipe, just like the original post did, but there's one little detail they left out that I want to warn you about...

Before I get to that, here's what you'll need to make 88 Tetris sugar cookies (more or less, depending on how large or small you cut them!):

1 cup of butter
1 1/2 cups of sugar
4 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 Tablespoon of milk
4 cups of flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder

Preheat your oven to 350 and cream the butter in your mixer. Add your sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, and milk and beat hard.

Add the flour and baking powder and beat again - if it's more liquidy than doughy, it's ok.
Cover your workspace with flour and roll out your dough. The thinner the dough, the crisper the cookies. If it's thick, the dough will puff up in the oven!

Now it's time to make the shapes. If you want to use a template, that'd be the smart solution. I decided to eyeball it instead. Meh.

Pop them in the oven until the bottoms and sides are golden brown (anywhere between 5-9 minutes, depending on the thickness of the cookies.

Let them cool before icing. Now if you have the time, you can make your own royal icing. However, by the time I finally got these puppies out of the oven, two hours had already gone by and I was exhausted. I colored white Pillsbury frosting out of a can instead. Don't kill me.

Now my version of Tetris on the Game Boy wasn't in color so I had no idea what color the pieces should be. Really, you can use any colors you want. If you have a black food writer pen, that'll probably work better than the black Wilton sparkle gel icing I used.

All in all, they were a big hit at game night, even if they didn't look perfect and took over 4 HOURS to make. This is one of those times where you can and should tell your kid, "Don't forget to play with your food!"

TOTAL COSTS: About $20 to make 88 cookies

$.99 for the butter

$2.69 for the sugar

$2.79 for the eggs

$2.29 for the milk

$3.29 for the flour

$1.99 for the baking powder

$1.99 for the frosting

$2.99 for the black Wilton Sparkle Gel

Used homemade vanilla extract and had food coloring on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: A little over 4 hours

10 minutes to make dough

2 hours to cut and bake 88 cookies

2 hours to decorate 63 of them

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 3 out of 5

Getting the right thickness, making sure they didn't burn, getting the black lines to be straight...yeah, there are a few places you could mess up. Heck, I dropped and broke quite a few, so try not to get too frustrated if they don't turn out perfect. Whoever is eating them will think they look and taste delicious, no matter what!

Zombie Poker Card Hair Pin

Planning a trip to Vegas? Love zombies? Have a regular game night? This might be the perfect accessory for all those situations and, if you really want to stretch it, could be for St. Patrick's Day as well (I only used the clubs in this case). Yeah, that last one might be a bit of a stretch... but it's relatively quick and easy to make and I can guarantee no one else will have anything like it! I found this post originally on Instructables. To make this you'll need:

1. A template to cut out the large, medium, and small pieces. I used the original's template, however I suppose you could just as easily make your own!

2. Card stock paper (for the template)

3. A deck of cards

4. Something to draw the template on the cards. A marker smeared, a pencil hardly showed, so I found a pen worked the best!

5. Glue - hot glue, glue stick, whatever you've got!

6. Something to put in the center. I thought of using a gemstone or a dime but found a better idea - see below!

7. A hair pin/barrette/clip/etc.

8. Scissors

First, print and cut out your three templates on card stock. Once they're cut out, place them on top of the following cards, trace around them with a pen, and cut them out:

* Large template over the top corner of the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and 10 cards

* Medium template over the number and suit of the 9, 8, 7, 6, and 5 cards

* Small template over the faces of the King, Queen, and Jack

Once all the pieces are cut out, fold the bottoms of each card up and cut a slit in the middle of each, up until the crease.

Slightly bend all the cards so they'll won't lie flat. You'll want them to pop out a bit once you're at the gluing stage.

Now the original post recommended gluing all the large cards in order (10, J, Q, K, A) in the top-right corner and once dry, pulling the Ace and 10 cards together to create the circle. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to do that and I failed miserably. Instead, I glued the bottom right corner of each card and created the circle that way. Don't worry if it's not perfect, it'll hardly be seen!

Once your large cards are glued together, take your medium cards and glue them on top in the middle.

And finally, take your three small cards and glue them in the middle as well.

Now you'll want to find something roughly the size of a dime. I used the back of one of the cards, used a dime as a template, and glued it in the center. It's a nice bloody touch, don't you think?

Glue your pin/barrette/clip to the back. Note that this could just as well work as a broach - it doesn't have to go in your hair.

And voila! Your unique accessory is complete!

TOTAL COSTS: $2.99

$2.99 for the Bicycle Zombies cards from Walgreens

Card stock, pen, scissors, hot glue, and hair pin all on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 1 hour

However, I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to glue just the large pieces in a circle so you might have better luck and get it done faster!

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 2 out of 5

The only difficult part is gluing the large pieces into a circle, however it's really not that hard, it's just a little frustrating if you're OCD like me!