A plate of party cookies...

This is the result of friends "helping" me make cookies. They are not exactly how I normally do them, but it was our annual Halloween party with all our friends and they weren't going to judge them by anything but taste... so I let them help, and it was actually quite fun and a little free-ing. I didn't get very many pics, but it is one pretty fun looking plate of cookies.

See if you can find all our spooky friends: witches, vampires, frankenstein (he's a little hidden) and his wife, black bats, purple bats, witch brooms and cauldrons, gravestones, eerie eyes, spider webs, ghosts, jack-o-lanterns, coffins, and various random halloween bites.

I want — Cooooookkkiiiieeesss

Okay so Karl had this get together tonight with some co-workers to watch the premier of Season 2 Walking Dead. Not many people know this about me but I officially have an issue with zombies... but only on screen. I can read about them, look at pictures, make cookies... but put them in motion on a tv or movie screen and I'm out.

Karl wanted to make something fun for the guys so we came up with this. He is actually going to serve them coming out of a dirt cake (pics to come soon). I had so much fun with these. They are custom cut from a paper stencil I made and then flipped so we could have left and right hands. I was so inspired by these that I wanted to take them on a photo shoot in our front yard :) Don't worry... they are safely resting on paper towels, the bark is just piled in front to look like the are coming out of the ground. I think I'm going to do another set of these for my office bake sale... I can picture it now... rice crispy treats, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, cupcakes, and bright green zombie hands! Too fun not to try.

More pics here.

Update: Here is the pic of what my husband did for the party. I was told the guys used their cookies like spoons and scooped out their cake with the fingers and they just took a big bite :)

I ended up making about 25 of these by the time Halloween came around. I think next year this may turn into my first custom cutter... these things take a surprisingly long time to make but they come out really cool so it's all worth it.

Warner Brothers... meet Disney.

My newest order was for an old college friend that contacted me for a quick last minute favor. Her mom is celebrating her 60th birthday on Thursday and the family is having a surprise party for her in Kentucky. As if the party wasn't enough, they are also surprising her with a trip to Orlando so she can visit the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios and visit Disney World... thus the Mickey meets Harry cookies :) I wanted to try and tie them all together so I carried the same colors thru most of the cookies. I love the way Harry came out. Harry and the Mickey with the buttons are the only un-altered cookies... all the other ones were custom made. The cupcakes came out super cute and my husband decided to help me and picked out yellow and red sprinkles out of my rainbow bottle for me, very patient and very awesome of him.

Seeds of Strength... the cookies that almost didn't happen

So this was the order of miscommunication :) I had a client request these cookies back in August but said he needed them for the end of September. About mid September I contacted him and he'd changed his mind and now wanted them in October. We touched base with him again last week and he said they were for a meeting on the 8th of this month... not a big deal so I started baking the cookies and set them aside until they were ready to decorate. Well last night my mother-in-law goes out where the client and her volunteer on Tuesdays and he asks her where the cookies were.

"What? I thought you didn't need them until the 8th?"
"Yeah, well I think the meeting is tomorrow, so I needed them tonight."
"Oh... I'll get back to you."

So she gets home and tells me the problem... "Eh, who needs sleep? I'll get them done tonight." This was at about 9:00pm and I still had another batch of cookies that needed to be baked for an order that has to go out on Saturday. So my dear husband rolled up his sleeves and helped me out with the baking and left me to the decorating. I had no clue what I was going to do going into this. I had a logo, a color, and that they liked scallops and details... that's it. Considering they were done very last minute, I thought they were a very good balance of simple and earthy. I think the 2 tone vine cookie was my favorite :)

More pics here.

Wedding favor ideas for a fall wedding

I've been working on my photo taking, what do you think? So my sister-in-law has a friend that is getting married in November. Her save the date cards were of the couple sitting in a movie theater watching a movie with the caption, "the best show is yet to come." Although she asked for fall leaves because of the season of the wedding, we thought we'd give them an alternate option that reflected their fun personalities and relate to their early announcements. So the above is option #1 for them to consider. The image below is closer to what they asked for, something clean and slightly modern that represents fall. I posted pictures of the fall leaves that I did for the Austin Bakes for Bastrop sale... this is why those were included for the bake sale. I really wanted to do a sample of these to send and to try out the new recipe for Brown Sugar Spice with Maple icing. The feedback from the sale was great so I feel like this could be an awesome addition to my fall line-up of flavors. This is also a preview of my new labels :)

Austin Bakes for Bastrop... the final tallys

I was absolutely humbled today by the amount of love that was baked into sugary treats this weekend to help the victims of the Bastrop wildfires. The event had set a goal of $10,000... that's a lot of money for bake sale but we were determined to reach it. At last count we were at $12,561.79!! Wow is all I can say. I started looking around at the fellow bakers from my sale and then going online to see what everyone else brought to the party. All I can say is it's a good thing we spread out or I would of bought one of everything I saw :) My final tally at the end of 4 very long days were: 18 Texas Flags, 12 Double layer Sunflowers, approximately 36 fall leaves, 6 pumpkins, 6 acorns, 18 red, white, & blue star "bites," and 36 texas "bites" with hearts. I am trying not to fall asleep as I type this because I really wanted to get a post in today. So much work but soooo worth every minute. I met a lot of very nice people today and got to try a new recipe, Brown Sugar Spice with Maple frosting, and they were delicious!

(Sorry about the pictures, it was really early in the morning so I had zero light to work with other than my flash and an incandescent overhead light)