Decorated Cookies as a Gift!!!

I am so excited! Please tell me what you think as I am thinking I will give these to my sister as a get well gift. The round one says Get Well Sis with a funny face on it. I got a close up of it but it didn’t look great. The big yellow tulip is sparkly with yellow sugar on top. I made green fondant for the leaves. The cookies are a basic sugar cookie with royal icing. This is my first attempt at cookie decorating. I usually don’t decorate except for my carrot cake and I just do a lot of simple stars over the whole thing. I made a LOT of cookies before I got it right. The trick to keeping it on the stick is to put a ball of dough down then the stick the then flower on top. I would then use a piece of wax paper to gently push down to adhere it all together. This took the longest of time to get right as I tried a lot of different ways. I used a piece of wax paper to avoid finger marks and also it avoids sticking. The butterflies are a separate pic as I think they look ugly so I didn’t put them in the flower pot. I used brown/gold curling ribbon for dirt. I notice in the pic I have a few spots where you see the green of the foam so I will add more ribbon. PLEASE tell me if you think it is ugly as I am headed to my sister’s tomorrow. Here are the recipes I used.


Royal Icing From Wilton.com

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons Meringue Powder
1 pound (4 cups) Confectioners' sugar
6 tablespoons warm water

instructions

Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with a heavy-duty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high speed with a hand-held mixer). Recipe makes 3 cups.
And then to thin it for filling the edges I added 1 teaspoon water per cup of royal icing but as it was a HOT day I kept a bowl of water and a measuring spoon and added ¼ teaspoon water as needed.


Sugar Cookies from Wilton.com

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) Butter softened
1 1/2 cups Granulated sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons Vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon No-Color Almond Extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon Salt

instructions
1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. In large mixing bowl, cream butter with sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add in egg, vanilla and almond extracts. Mix flour, baking powder and salt; add 1 cup at a time to butter mixture, mixing after each addition.
3. Do not chill dough. - I did anyway it helped me work longer on the dough.
4. Divide dough into 2 balls. On a floured surface, roll each ball into a circle approximately 12 in. wide and 1/8 in. thick. Dip cookie cutter in flour before each use.
5. Bake cookies on ungreased cookie sheet on top rack of oven for 6-7 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned I used a silpat sheet to make it super easy to remove.
I didn’t have any almond extract so I used 2 teaspoon vanilla. These bake super fast I was really surprised.

Don't move the cookie right away LET THEM REST on the cookie sheet for about 10 minutes as it helps them set up. I rushed it at first and they were to soft I have about 50 1/2 daisies.:(
Thanks for any input you have.