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Sure, cookie tins are great for storing cookies. But did you know that you can also make an instrument out of one? Actually, you can make several if you use your imagination. But how about starting out with a banjo made from a cookie tin?

Now granted, you may not be able to hit the Grand Ole Opry with your instrument, but it will be fun for grown-ups and kids alike. You’ll need to gather some materials. First, you’ll need a cookie tin of a medium or large size. The teeniest of cookie tins are good as toys, but if you want to try to play it, use a bigger one. Most metal cookie tins that you’ve saved from butter cookies are perfect. You can also find these tins by the truckload at the Goodwill or Salvation Army.

Next, you’ll need some sort of wood for the neck. If you’ve got a workshop full of scrap wood, great. If not, ask around and see if anyone you know has a piece of wood that can be used to make the neck of a banjo. It should be about 25-30 inches long, depending on your tin size.

Here’s where you can get creative. You’ll need strings. You can go out and easily find guitar strings at a music store. But if you’re mainly aiming to use the banjo for the kids to bang around and play pretend with, don’t go to that expense. Use yarn or string.

Now, if you are a handy person, you will want to drill your tin with a hole big enough to insert the neck piece for the banjo. If not, just use wood glue or a hot glue gun to glue it to the top of the circular tin.

After your neck has adhered to the cookie tin (or been threaded through the tin), you can go ahead and embellish the banjo. Some ideas include adding a fret for the keys to rest on and tuning pegs from a guitar store. If you just want to play with it, string yarn “strings” up and down the neck of the guitar. Your tin’s cover will be the front of the banjo. Depending on how fancy you want to get, you can include fret bars and the aforementioned fret on the actual tin.

You can actually get a sound out of your banjo using a cookie tin. It’s fun and exciting to see it come to life. If you’re handy with wood and tools, your banjo can sound great with just a few pieces from the guitar store. Tell the shop owner that you are making a banjo and he may have the perfect ideas for you and be able to recommend products.

If you’re going to form a living room band with the kids, keep your materials age-friendly. Younger kids will love the thick, soft yarns from the craft store, while older kids might like string that feels more like guitar or banjo strings on theirs. Keep it fun and let the kids decorate their cookie tins. It’s a great rainy day activity that passes the time in a meaningful way. And you can always hang your creations on the wall when you’re resting from a heavy day of playing gigs.

Are you one of those parents who can instantly whip up a creative, professional-looking costume every Halloween without fail? Are you full of good ideas and crafty know-how? Or are you like the rest of us, who may be short on time, sewing skills, or the capacity to make this year’s must-have costume? Don’t worry; you can make an adorable chocolate chip cookie costume for your child that will make you want to just eat him up.

For this costume, you need minimal sewing skills and a few craft supplies. Gather:

• Light brown or tan felt

• Dark brown felt

• Fabric glue or Elmer’s all-purpose glue

• Some cotton batting or pillow stuffing

Cut out four large circles from the light brown or tan felt. This will become the base of your cookie. You can trace a circle with a five-gallon bucket, a large mixing bowl, or a round trash can or simply free draw a circle, trying to make it symmetrical. Don’t worry too much about this – chocolate chip cookies are delicious whether they are symmetrical or not.

Cut small circles from the dark brown felt. These will be your chocolate chips. The next step is to glue the chocolate chips onto the cookie. Fabric glue is great, but you can also get by with Elmer’s if you make sure to let it dry thoroughly. You should now have a front and a back for two cookies (the chips only need to be on the front). Turn the wrong sides out on one of the cookie sets and sew it together. Leave a hole for the stuffing, and turn the big cookie right side out. Stuff your cookie, and then sew the hole. Do this for the second cookie.

Next, you’ll need to make straps. These will keep the cookie costume on your child and are very much like backpack strips. Cut strips from your light brown or tan felt. Enlist your child’s help: hold the cookies to her body and mark where you will place the straps. They should fit over the shoulders and then under the arms. You can then sew the straps in place or pierce the cookie felt and thread the straps through. The latter is easier and a more effective means of keeping the straps in place.

That’s it: your kid cookie is all ready for Halloween. The best part of this costume, though, is that it can be used again. You can take the straps off and use it for a floor or bed pillow or a chair cushion.

If you are pressed for time, you can choose a piece of light brown or tan fleece. Have your child lie down on it and draw a circle around them. Use dark brown fleece or felt for the chips, and then sew the two pieces together. Leave an opening for the neck and for the legs, and cut arm holes out. Even more pressed for time? Find a light brown sweat suit and pick up some dark brown felt. Glue the “chocolate chips” scattered throughout the sweat suit and call it a day. You can also just do a few quick stitches to put the chips on, which can later be removed so your child can wear the sweat suit for playtime or bed.

If your child is a cookie monster, she’ll love this homemade costume.

Oreo cookies are a classic American treat; these chocolate sandwich cookies are a favorite of kids and adults alike. If you are looking for a creative Halloween costume idea for your child, what could be better than combining our favorite snack and our favorite holiday? It is easy to make an Oreo halloween cookie costume for your child, and you don’t need a lot of time, money, or artsy crafty skills. By following these directions, you’ll have a costume that will look so cute you’ll want to eat it right up.

It will take you about two hours to make an Oreo cookie costume, and it requires no sewing at all. You can size it just as easily for a toddler as you can for a teenager, and you need only basic supplies. Assemble the following:

• Two large pieces of cardboard

• Scissors

• Letter stencils (O, R, and E)

• Two white shoelaces

• White turtleneck and white pants

• Black spray paint and white spray paint

Your biggest expense will be the spray paint, which typically costs under $5 per can. You can also use craft paint, which will take a little more time but will work equally well.

You are going to cut the cardboard into two circles. Before you do, get your child to stand in front of you for a few minutes. You want to make sure the circles are the correct size. You can use a round serving platter, small hula hoop, large mixing bowl, trash can, plant pot, or other circular object to make sure your circle is, in fact, circle!

Lay the cut circles on some newspaper and paint one side of each black. Let this dry thoroughly. When it is entirely dry, arrange the stencils to spell OREO and spray paint white. You can also trace around the stencils in pencil and then paint them with craft paint and a brush. Let the lettering dry as well.

When the two cardboard pieces are ready, poke two holes at the top near each shoulder. Make them just big enough for the shoelace to fit through. Tie the laces to create a sandwich board, and voila! You are ready for Halloween as soon as you put on white clothing and your cookie costume. This has to be one of the easiest, least expensive costume ideas and is great for last-minute parties.

A cute variation that won’t take much time is to cut out a chunk of the “cookie” so it looks like someone has taken a bite. Make sure that both sides match up. This is an especially great idea for little children. Don't forget about your treat bag. Cut the top off of a gallon jug of milk but leave the handle in tact. It's a perfect way to carry around all that halloween candy because it's sturdy and won't split open the heavier it gets.

An Oreo’s best friend is milk, and you can incorporate that into the costume as well. You could simply smudge on a milk moustache using white face paint or Halloween makeup or make a little sign for your child that says, “Got milk?” If you have a little more time and a little more cardboard and want to make another costume for one of your other children, a friend, or yourself, you can make a milk costume. You can find great instructions here, and as with the Oreo costume, you do not need to sew or possess any great crafting skills.

Halloween is all about treats; what a great time to dress up as one of your favorites!

If you’ve always wanted to become an expert home baker - the one that everyone requests cookies from, or the one who is known for their cookie gifts - then you need to stock up on a few tools. It’s not hard to learn to bake delicious sweets that come out perfect every time. Having the right equipment can certainly help.

You’ll need good baking sheets. These are a requirement if you’re going to bake anything at all. If you want the best pans, you need to know about the different types. There are aluminum pans that are light in color that are perfect for most baking applications. Professional bakers use them because of their even cooking properties. AirBake pans hold air between two layers of aluminum. These are ideal if you want cookies that don’t burn as easily. The air flows between the two sheets and allows the heat to be distributed more evenly. If you tend to burn your cookies, go with this type of pan.

A good rubber spatula that is not going to bend or crack with extended use is a must for scraping those last bits of batter out of the bowl. Invest in a professional quality spatula found at a restaurant or cooking supply store. You’ll be glad you did.

Have a mixer on hand. When you’re just starting out, you may not have the money for a luxury model like a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. But if you do, by all means get one for yourself. If you need to go with an electric hand-mixer, that’s fine, too. The beaters come off for easy cleaning and you can get by with it for just about every recipe. You may have to replace it once or twice as it wears out from overuse, but they’re cheap enough that you won’t mind.

You’ll need an oven thermometer if you plan to have cookies that come out perfectly baked. Not all ovens are the same. 350 degrees on one may not equal 350 degrees on another. So you’ll want to keep a separate thermometer inside the oven so that you can tell how much heat it’s really throwing. Go by the thermometer and not the external heat control dial. That way, you can bake your cookies for exactly the recommended time and have them turn out ideally.

Good ingredients are really the most important baking tools you can have. If you’re using the freshest chips, the finest nuts, newly opened flour, baking powder and sugars, you know your baked goods will come out tasty. Never use old baking powder or baking soda. They have expiration dates for a reason. Once they are past their prime, they will no longer have the leavening power they once did. The same goes for expired yeast. Just toss it. Once it hits the expiration date, your dough won’t rise at all.

Of course, you’ll want to have quality wooden spoons, measuring cups, and measuring spoons on hand. And really it’s all about browsing the kitchen aisle when you’re out shopping. Do you bake a lot? Then invest in the best mixing bowls you can find either in glass or metal. You’ll be so glad you picked up the best tools because you won’t have to go out and buy them time and again when they break.

Woo-hoo!  Our delicious longstem cookies were chosen as the gift of the day but the tasting team over at the Gourmet Gift of the Day blog.  It appears that one of the husband of one of the blog staffers sent her a dozen of our gourmet cookies in a gift box.  She loved the cookies and presentation of course... hence the award.  And we are thrilled!

Our longstem cookies are available in numerous longstem box colors including gold, white, light blue, pink and red (during Valentine's Day).  You can choose from various cookie flavors including macadamia nut, peanut butter with peanut butter chips, chocolate chip with or without nuts and more.  The cookies on stems are presented with ribbons on a bed of tissue inside the box.  Prices start at just $33 for a half dozen of our jumbo cookies that weigh over 1/4 lb each.  For more information or to purchase this gift, see our Longstem Classic Cookie Gift Boxes.

• 1 cup orange juice
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 tangerines or oranges
• 2 peaches
• 1 cup strawberries or raspberries
• 1/4 cup blanched chopped almonds

Cook the orange juice, water, sugar, and cinnamon until a syrup is formed. Cool. Segment the tangerines or oranges; slice the peaches and berries. Combine in a bowl and pour syrup all over them. Chill 1 hour; sprinkle with the gourmet nuts and serve in sherbet cups.

If you enjoy this recipe, be sure to try the recipe for Blueberry frozen yogurt.