2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 9,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 16 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Birch Beauties

My parents live in Iowa…well, they live in Iowa for a few more days, but after the new year they are packing up and moving east to be closer to my family and I. I am a very lucky daughter! Unfortunately, they are leaving an AMAZING network of friends. The group of 10+ women that my Mom has become incredibly close with call themselves the “Laughing Ladies”…and they really are! I’ve witnessed it myself! The Laughing Ladies are wonderful, loving, women and I couldn’t wish for better friends for her to have. Hands down both my parents and their friends will go through withdrawals over the next few months 😉

As a parting gift, some of the Laughing Ladies bought my parents a beautiful beautiful painting that weeks before on a little shopping day trip my Mom had fallen in love with. They were sneaky! They bought the painting that same week as the shopping trip and even had the owner of the shop make stories up about the painting when my Mom went back a week later to show my Dad the painting and buy it for herself. When the Laughing Ladies gave my parents the painting, they made my Mom promise not to write them thank you notes. Well…my Mom can be sneaky too ladies 😉 Below is the beautiful painting and her non-thank you card cookies 🙂

Piped the birch trees on a solid black background

Sorry for the lack of rotation! Added a brown background to the bottom leaves

Piped butter colored and gold colored leaves on top of the birch trees

Last step was to add the red leaves on top of the brown background and using an edible pen add the black dots to the larger birch trees

Mom and Dad’s new painting

 

Holiday Spirit

Over the past few weeks I have been busy decorating an assortment of Christmas and Holiday cookies for various customers. It’s easy to say it’s kept me amazingly busy, but more important it has really pushed me in the Christmas spirit. It’s hard not to be excited when you’re making snowmen and reindeers. I sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to my daughters the day after I made these little guys…(and have sang it every day since at her request haha)

One of my customers wanted to give her employees a decorated cookie along with a cookie that said Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays so I piped up these adorable cookies…

Another customer ordered 6 dozen favors for their corporate holiday party. As much as I tried, these did not bring snow our way…yet!!

I made these simple cookies for my daughter and the other adorable kiddies to enjoy at her day care…

It has been a wonderful holiday season so far and we still have another week to go. I am done decorating cookies for 2012 and am going to truly enjoy my time off with my adorable little girls and my amazing husband as we wait and watch for Mr. Claus 🙂

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

 

The Force Be With You

I am here to admit…I’m not a Star Wars fan. I might be if I watch the movie(s) all the way through. But as soon as the weird looking characters come on screen I feel myself stifling a giggle 😉 They’re just so funny looking I find it hard to take the movie serious. However, my husband would watch any of the Star Wars movies ANY chance he could get. If he’s zapping through the channels and comes across one, regardless if he watched one the day before, he stops and watches it. He loves them. True fan.

So when an amazing woman found me on Facebook (LaDonna you’re awesome!!) and asked for Star Wars cookies for her little cousin I was all over it! I WANTED to learn the characters. I WANTED to get them right for Curtis’ birthday. I called in the household storm trooper (hubby) and he gave me the run down. You know…Is it light saver or light saber?, What color are light sabers?, Is this green a good Yoda green?…you know the basics 😉

Happy Birthday Curtis! May the force be with you! (Just added “Find out what the force is” to my list) 🙂

Related articles

• 18 Awesome Gifts for Star Wars Fans (Whether They’re 4 or 40) (redtri.com)
• Use the force (decisionsformyfamily.com)
• 25 Light Saber Products – From Luminescent Sci-Fi Clips to Futuristic Glowing Sabers (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)

Ga Ga Over Onesies!

Goo Goo Gaa Gaa…the past two weeks were full of adorable baby onesies! One order for little girl onesies to coordinate with a tutu themed 1st birthday and one order for little boy onesies matching a baby shower invitation. Now that my daughter is over 1 and technically no longer considered a baby (in my books they’ll always be my babies though!!) it was fun decorating these cookies and reminiscing about their baby months 🙂 Awww Yep…I’m a softie for babies 😉 Hope both parties enjoy their sweet little baby onesies!

Kimberly-Clark Product Cookies

When I started my business I pictured myself making snowflake cookies, hearts for loved ones, and cartoon characters for birthday favors. While I never thought about the designs of cookies I wouldn’t ever make, this past week I had to laugh because I’m fairly certain if I had, these would have been on my list.  I received an order for Kimberly-Clark product cookies.  We’re talking Kotex, Depend, Kleenex, Poise, Huggies, and Pull-ups. Yep…don’t think I ever would have thought I’d be decorating tampons 🙂 But the day has come and I’m super glad it did! They turned out awesome and I had soooo much fun coming up with the designs. Love feeling those creative juices flowing 🙂

Here’s how it all started…I wanted some funny designs and others the product logo:

Then came what colors I would need. When I realized how many colors I originally planned for, I cut back a few of the non-essentials:

And here they are folks! The K-C product cookies! Hope they enjoy 🙂

ABC’s

I have officially deemed Chris as my funniest customer thus far! OMG she is a riot! I enjoyed every email correspondence as it always made me laugh. I even read her responses to my husband and he laughed! Wish we lived closer…I have a feeling it would be fun to get to know her 🙂

Chris emailed me last week inquiring about alphabet letters. She signed up to bring cookies to her daughter’s school and self diagnosed herself as being in over her head.  I commend her for recognizing this early on…I would have been elbow deep in flour the day before cookies were due, crying to my husband that “I Can’t Do This!!” 😉 So pat on the back Chris!! Here’s how our cookie relationship started:

The tutorials I have just watched on youtube have immediately filled me with dread and made me confront my limitations. So, I am appealing to you. However, before I even begin to search for letter stencils, make dough, xacto cut out the letters, make a usable batch of royal icing for the very first time in my life, pipe out the outlines, fill them in, shake cookies, and poke out bubbles for 26 letters (!!!!) I thought I would solicit an estimate from you if you are interested and available to do this.

How can I say no to someone that funny! It also reminded me when I started getting into cookies and watched hundreds of YouTube videos. I was terrified as well! And those damn bubbles STILL give me nightmares! Grrr…

Had so much fun decorating these cookies…and fun spelling out mine and my daughter’s names. I would have spelled out my husband’s, but he has repeat letters so he had to sit this one out 😉

The inspiration for the uber cool color scheme was taken directly from the book her daughter’s class was reading 🙂

Happy Halloween Traditions

I am a holiday lover. I get it from my Mom. I grew up with my Mom toting out boxes or bins of decorations for every conceivable holiday and strategically placing them around the house. I loved it. It always felt fun and festive at our house when a holiday was approaching 🙂 Now that I have a family of my own, I have slowly been accumulating my own decorations for the kids. It’s just one of those traditions that I cherish and will continue.

A woman emailed me that she always buys her grandkids cookies for halloween and wanted to send her four grand-lovies some of my cookies this year. Double fun!  A holiday tradition AND sugar…love it!! I hope the kids love their cookies made especially for them sent with love from their Grandma M 🙂  What a cool Grandma!!

Fabulous Fashionista

One of my friends is turning 30 and her Mom ordered some cookies for her special day. My friend is none other than the amazing talent who designed the Royal Cookie Designs logo so of course her cookies had to be state of the art 😉

My friend Brittany has to be one of the most beautiful women I know…inside and out. But let me tell ya…she is one hot mama! She always looks uber fabulous!! So when her Mom suggested high heels I knew we had to take it one step further and the obvious design was of course fashion!

Hope you had a fantastic birthday Brittany! Wish I lived closer and could help you celebrate 🙂

Another 40

It seems like I made a lot of cookies for 5 year olds and 40 year olds this year. One of those 40 year old birthdays was none other than my own hubby 🙂 He’s definitely like a good wine…keeps getting better with age 🙂

Here are the fun cookies I made for his party. I started with a cupcake cutter and squeezed it while pushing it into the dough so it elongated the cutter into a more beer pint glass shape. I also cut off the cherry on the top from the dough so it was more rounded like a head of beer.

I just couldn’t imagine giving little kids beer designed cookies, to I modifyed the design slightly and made the kiddos root beer instead!