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

Floral themed cookie collection

Cookies for the fabulous Tricia Dunlap of Dunlap Portraits... Seriously if you are anywhere near Austin and want some awesome pics... Tricia blows me away (check her out, http://dunlapportrait.com/). I did these as part of a celebration for her husbands Grandmother. I love the color palette, soft yet still kinda modern... I think I have to go back and find a few more of these plates Tricia, I hope you and your family enjoy them!

More bow ties :)

More Bow Ties  These were done for a bow tie themed baby shower. I really enjoyed this color palette and everything was done wet on wet icing, no painting on these for a change. I love all the different patterns and the small pops of orange. I hope they are a hit with the party goers this weekend.

Birthday cookies for a big Indians fan :)

Happy Birthday Mama Elsie! These are heading your way tomorrow and I know what a big Indians fan you are so I hope you and the family enjoy them... if you share ;)

Viera Suntree Little League, finale

Operation Cookie Takeover, a little bit of Texas goes to Iraq

Happy New Year... Cape Cod style

I friend asked me to make some New Years cookies to send her family who lives in Cape Cod. I was given freedom to do anything I wanted so I challenged myself to do something in all white to go with the orange gingerbread flavor. This set was a lot of fun and even though there wasn't any color I really liked all the texture and detail I got. The seagulls were my favorite :)

Happy Father's Day

I got an email from the mom I did the "Little Man" cookies for asking if I could do some gluten free Father's Day cookies for her husband. She was open to anything I wanted to do as long as it was "Dad" themed. I've always wanted to try text heavy cookies so I figured this would be a good one to try them on. I found these great printable tags that I modified and mixed and matched till I got what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to try my new word burst cookie cutter so I looked up different ways to say "Father" in different languages (there were a few more that didn't make it in the pic).  I think the colors came out great and the dad ended up liking them a lot too :)

Happy Mother's Day, Part 1

It's Mother's Day, and I was asked to make cookie for two very special moms. This set was for a "classy" mom who loved black and white with just a little red for accent. I immediately thought of  a guest post by Ali-Bee on Sweet Sugar Bell's blog who did a tutorial on creating brush embroidery (here) and thought this would be a great time to give it a shot. I really liked the way these came out. I was a little afraid of doing black and white cookies for Mother's Day and that they'd be a little odd but all in all I think these were exactly what she wanted.

Birthday St. Patrick's Day cookies

I have a friend... she is from Jersey but she thinks she's from Ireland. She loves all things Irish, British, Scottish... basically anything with a European accent :) Her birthday is always just before St. Patrick's Day so in school we'd always buy up all the St. Patrick's Day decorations to use to decorate, even though we'd be a few weeks early. I saw these cookies on Lila Loa's blog (see posting here) and immediately thought of my friend and knew I had to try them. They are not as pretty as hers but I think these are super cute and really easy to recreate. She always tries to tell everyone that she has a friend that makes cookies. Even though she's never had one, I think she's my biggest fan... so it was about time she got to sample the product she's always talking about. I'll let you know how she liked them but I'm super excited to hear when she gets her box.

Supporting my friend... Stylehouse 512

My friend and coworker, Abby Schultz, has decided to start her own business as a Personal Stylist/Shopper/Organizer, Stylehouse 512. She has done some local stuff within her area of Lakeway but as an up and coming independent stylist, she wanted to try and expand her cliental and share her love for fasion at the semi-annual Le Garage Sale next weekend, Jan 28-29. There are going to be over fifty vendors there all giving great deals, so if your in the Austin area you should check it out.

She didn't want to hand out generic candy so she came to me to make some thing fun and memorable she could hand out with her cards that would represent her style. I would describe her style as eclectic vintage. She loves color but is a sucker for pastels and lace. If you want a to read some fun commentary on fashion, check out her blog :)

Since we had to do so many of these, I decided to try stamping them with a monogram. I'd read about people using rubber stamps on fondant and figured it may work for royal icing just as well. We did a simple vanilla cookie with ivory frosting, stamped the monogram with black food coloring, and then I went back and added the scallop border to make them a little more frilly. All in all, this is the biggest order I've done of the same image (we ended up with about 210 total), I love the idea of the stamps and may have to find a way to use them more on instances like this.

Animal Crackers in My... Soup?

Animal crackers in my soup
monkies and rabbits loop the loop,
Gosh, oh gee, but I have fun,
swallowin' animals one by one.

I recently purchased an awesome set of vintage animal cookie cutters from my local antique mall and immediately thought of Bake@350's posting for frosted animal cookies. I know she's not the first or only one to have this idea, I've seen quite a few of them, but hers was the first one that came to mind. 

I have a friend in college that used to eat these thing by the tub full (well the non-frosted ones anyway, they're "non-fat" so it's okay to eat a bunch, the frosted ones were a treat). I've been trying to think of something to make for her and her family as a nice "thinking of you" kind of gift, and these are going to be it. It wasn't until after I got them all decorated and ready to ship that I realized I broke the cardinal rule of cookie shipping... Don't ship anything with "limbs," and these are nothing but limbs. I'm gonna try and reinforce them a little and hope they make it. With 3 boys, not counting her husband, I'm sure if they are a little battle damaged by the time they get there. Even limbs will taste good going down.


See close-ups of the animal cookies/crackers here.

A Family Reunion in Maryland

Shhh, it's a surprise. My good friend Abby asked me to make her some cookies to take with her to a family reunion she is on a plane flying to right now. I wasn't allowed to post pictures of anything until after she got there because her mom loves Facebook and we are friends :) I had so much fun making these, we had a whole list of ideas but settled on Crabs (you know, cuz it's Maryland), Chickens (because supposedly they are well known for their cooked chicken), and to surprise her grandma we did "Mom P" cookies, complete with bright pink lipstick. I have to admit, grandma was a bit of a challenge to figure out. I had to do these all in one night so I couldn't do too many layers that had to dry... then I discovered food markers! These things are awesome! I drew out 10 heads with hair and then just filled in the lines, easy as pie. I cannot wait to hear how the family likes them... I'll post an update if I hear anything.

See more pictures here.

Just a little bite...

My son discovered that there was a whole table of freshly baked cookies in the dining room... and no one was guarding them. I noticed he was very quiet and called out to him, he had one cookie just barely in his mouth. I asked him what he thought he was doing and his response was, "it's only a little bite," as he carefully placed it back on the stack with the others. I wanted to be mad but we'd never discussed which cookies were his and which were off limits. I stayed up that night working on a "secret" project and when I was done I looked down at "his" cookie and decided to make it his for real. He was so excited to have a cookie with his name on it and promised to only eat cookies out of the jar in the kitchen from now on.

(Daddy got one too since I didn't want him to feel left out, the boys got to have theirs together the next afternoon)

It's A Girl!

My dad's coworker just delivered a beautiful baby girl, Elena, and one of the mom's favorite foods is cookies... so naturally my dad asked me to make her some and ship them to California. I was excited to do something girly for a change, so much pink icing :) These came out super cute and way better than I could of planned. I ended up just kinda winging it last night and doing whatever felt right at the time. I hope she likes them, congrats to the new family! See more pictures here.

Get Russ to Kenya

So we have a friend that is working with CTC International (a world community outreach that enables less fortunate areas of our world experience something better) to teach art skills at a local orphanage and help them find ways to create income using their creativity. He's going to be filming a documentary while he's there and I am so excited for him that he is going to get this opportunity to go and help. Since I don't have the cash to donate, I told him I would make him cookies and he could try and sell them at work... any money he gets goes toward his trip. I found this flag cookie cutter and wanted to do something that related to where he was going instead of something just fun. I hope everyone likes them and they can bring him a few dollars to help out. If you are feeling generous and want to donate, or if you just want to learn more about the program, here is a link to the CTC and Russ's team.

More cookie pictures here.

Update: He got enough money :) After much work and wonderful friends, Russ raised the money he needed for his trip and is all set to go sometime in the next few weeks. Thanks to everyone who supported his cause and congrats to Russ, have a blast and do some good for a change ;)

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.

Boys Night Out

Karl rarely gets to hang out with the guys so when his friend decided to have a poker night, Karl wanted to bring something fun... poker chip shaped cookies (and a few chocolate chip for good measure).

I wasn't quite sure how I was going to pull these off, but after a few (dozen) "boo-boo" cookies, we ended up with these. The guys seemed to really like them since none of them made their way back home, thank goodness for boo-boo cookies... without them I'd never get to try anything :)