Painting fun, splattering on cookies... messy, messy fun.

Just finished some fun birthday cookies for some girls celebrating at Painting with a Twist... These were for Miss Alyssa's birthday, I was told her favorite colors are lime green, teal and purple... and she wanted something fun. Here's hoping they live up to her expectations

Bright colored ice cream cones

These were done for a splash pad party, they were put into cute little boxes that had brightly colored patterns on them.

DJ Birthday Cookies

This was just a quick order for one of my coworkers who requested a small set of cookies for a friend that is a DJ. He and his wife are on a diet so she didn't want anything big but gave me liberty to make them fun. This is what I came up with... The records are dark chocolate and the stars and "turn table" are vanilla bean. I love the way the black food marker showed up on the coco icing. Hopefully her friend will enjoy them and not worry about the diet for a few bites at least.

(sorry for the color on the photo, it was taken at night)

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)

Happy Birthday Wizard 101... 3 years and growing!

We have a small company out here called KingsIsle Entertainment that puts out an amazing game called Wizard 101. It's a massive multiplayer online game for kids (and adults) of all ages, kinda like World of Warcraft meets Harry Potter. If you aren't already one of 20+ million players then you should check it out (Wizard101.com), you can play for free but it's only available on the PC :(.  Okay, enough sales pitch for one day, back to the story. So the game is 3 years old today which is awesome and I'm very proud of my Austin guys for coming up with something special that everyone seems to love so much. I wanted to do something extra special so I decided to make a large arrangement of cookies with all new flavors that would correspond to their 7 schools of magic (Life, Death, Fire, Ice, Myth, Storm, and Balance). I've never done this many cookies at once and I can say it was way more work than I was expecting but so worth it in the end. They ate it up, literally, and loved the new flavors.

On a side note, Texas passed a law that became effective yesterday which legalized home based baking businesses... so I'm now official and legal :) Look for way more news and changes to come, I can't wait to start seeing where this all takes me.

This is what 181 cookies look like, and this was only half!

A new baby about to join the world

My friend is expecting his first kiddo. He is totally playing the proud papa role right now sending out pictures of the ultrasound and posting video of the heartbeat to his facebook. He and his wife are such good and deserving people and we are all very excited for them.

Since I work with the future dad, he has had a chance to sample many of my "boo-boo" cookies that I bring into work (so they don't all go to my waist). His wife has been supper supportive and encouraging but had not had a chance to sample anything yet. I wanted to make them something special that was just for them. Since they are not very far along they do not know any gender information yet but knowing mom and dad I put together something that is pretty gender neutral and not too "baby" in color. I really like the color palette for these, I think they all worked really well. I love the stars and want to make a million more just to see how many faces I can come up with. We had a chance to deliver them tonight and they were very well received. All my love goes out to Brian and Barbara, so far it hasn't been the easiest first couple weeks but she's almost over the first hurdle and ready to enjoy being pregnant.

See more pics here.

Thank you to the Garrison Brothers...

Garrison Brothers Distillery is located in the little town of Hye, Texas. They are the first legal distillery in Texas and have only shipped twice to local retail stores and both times were sold out in a matter of a few days. I had the wonderful fortune of getting on a waiting list for one of the first shipments just before Christmas and the day it came in I dragged my son all the way to Fredericksburg (1.5 hours away) to buy the little bottle of amber gold. On the drive back we saw the sign for the tiny town of Hye and decided to take an adventure and see if we could find the actual distillery and get a picture to go with the bottle. A few miles of dirt road later we came across it and pulled in, almost instantly a man in a big pickup pulled up behind me and I was sure he was gonna kick me out... I was there without any appointment and I had an infant in the backseat. He didn't, his name was Dan and he was awesome, I told him why I was there and he took me up to see the operation and get better pictures, he even signed the bottle for Karl (which was so awesome he wouldn't open it to try it out). I left so excited, Mr. Dan Garrison totally made my day and a pretty cool gift transformed into something totally custom and amazing.

So, flash forward a few months and my parents are down to visit for my husband's birthday. As a gift I sent the guys down to the distillery for a "Sit and Sip" tour. I wanted to thank Mr. Dan for his kindness and decided that all men love food so cookies were a safe bet. I did some research on their operation and came up with a good variety. The royal icing was flavored with their bourbon which gave it a nice subtle spice flavor once dry. If anyone is a big bourbon fan and traveling through the Fredericksburg area, I highly recommend giving them a visit... just remember to call first ;)

The main cookies: bourbon bottle image, texas star logo, Hye bottle tag, black wax seal in chocolate, bourbon barrels with logo stamp, white cowboy hat (for Mr. Dan), and in the center... the Cowgirl, their first sill that started it all.

Going in solo

Karl's mom volunteers for a program called Horses for Heros that operates here in Georgetown at The R.O.C.K. They provide therapy for veterans that are dealing with physical and emotional distress by giving them a place to meet and have a meal while working with horses to help them heal. The veterans get to work with the volunteers to ride horses together. She really enjoys it and I was looking for an excuse to go solo and make some cookies, so when they had a memorial day party I told her I'd make some cookies.

I couldn't of been happier with these. They took forever but they were worth the work and everyone there really enjoyed them which was awesome.

More pics here.