Sweets for my Sweetheart(s)

Happy Valentine's Day!  With or without a boyfriend (previously it's always been without) I like Valentine's Day.  I'll always take an excuse to get dressed up and go out for dinner with my girlfriends.  And you can't be surprised to hear I'm a fan of all the ridiculously adorable Valentine's-themed desserts out there.  This year I sent packages of goodies to Boyfriend, my little brother, and one of my college roommates (I would have sent a package to my other college roommate, but she only eats 3 food groups now, none of which are butter or sugar.), and the cookies just turned out so freaking cute that I had to share them.

I made these chocolate cookie sandwiches from Sprinkle Bakes - a lot of her her desserts are more involved than I'm generally looking for, but man are they gorgeous.  But these cookies were just the right amount of involved AND they used up every last sprinkle I had!

I also made these conversation heart cookies from Annie's Eats.  The sugar monster inside of me loves conversation hearts, and the cookies are just so cute.  And it was fun to throw in a couple "specialized" ones.  This was my second attempt at decorating with royal icing, and I've decided it's a lot of fun (though rather time consuming).  Please ignore the icky-looking butter prints on the paper towel and consider how delicious and buttery it means these cookies are.

For my labmate.  My labmates got the extras that didn't get mailed.

I also made these yummy toffee blondies from Lovin' from the Oven.  I didn't take any photos since they taste much, much better than they look.  Also I substituted regular chocolate chips for the white chocolate chips because white chocolate is icky.

Sorry to post this so late, but I wanted to wait until the packages got to their destinations before posting.  Hopefully they all beat this!