Happy New Year!

I hope everyone's enjoying their New Year's Eve!!  We went to our friend's house for a little soiree...good food, good company and an early New Year's countdown for the kids.  Hopefully I'll make it to midnight.  I might be in bed reading a book, but I'm determined to see the ball drop. 

Here are some photos of the cookies I made for the party tonight...

Tomorrow I'll be off and running...The Hamilton Hangover 5 mile run, that is!  I am determined to start off the New Year on a positive note.  13 is my lucky number, so it's bound to be a good year...right?!

Christmas Cookies are D.O.N.E.

Yayyyyy!  I've finally completed a project.  ALL of the holiday cookies are finished!  My last order is done and ready to be delivered this weekend...

 

 

One of my holiday traditions are chocolate frogs.  If you know me, you know about my love for frogs (typically not real ones).  Awhile ago, I found some cute chocolate molds at Candyland Crafts...thus started my holiday chocolate frog tradition.  This year I decided to add holiday frog cookies to the mix...

 

 

Tonight I will be bagging about 50 of these cuties for friends and family.  Then it's back to the sewing machine to finish up a couple of orders (and a couple of small quilts for the Moms for their birthdays...I'll post that sometime next week).

 

Happy Holidays everyone!!

 



Holidaze

I definitely feel like I'm in a daze right now.  Well, I've been feeling this way since Thanksgiving...the holiday rush starts right after Thanksgiving for our family (it's probably the same for most people!).  All I dream about are cookies and fabric...and let me tell you, there are some weird things going on between those two items in my head.  Moving on...

I finished my first sets of holiday orders!  Yayyy!!  Here are the finished products...

Winter Penguins

 



Fuzzy Mittens

Snowmen

 

Gingerbreadmen

 

 

I'm in the process of bagging and tagging those cookies...I need to make sure they say "nut free" because they're being used as favors at an elementary school and day care center! 

 

Tonight I'm going to a holiday party...and, of course, I volunteered to make cookies.  And what's a cookie exchange without the cookies?  That event is tomorrow afternoon.  I was able to use a few leftovers from the above orders, as well as some other fun holiday shapes, to make up my party platters...

 

 

Now for a small cookie break!!  I have more to make, but they don't have to be ready until next weekend.  Time to work on our family sweets tradition, which I'll blog about over the weekend...



 

 

Monkey Madness

I can now breathe a sigh of relief because my monkey cookies will be delivered tomorrow!

I made these "Julius inspired" cookies for one of our family members for his birthday favors.  He loves Julius and I love a challenge, so we had a perfect combination!

I was really nervous about getting the shape of the face right, so I didn't want to ice the face directly onto the cookie.  I decided to print out the image and trace it directly onto parchment paper.  That worked great, UNTIL...

I realized that I couldn't see the lovely details of the face because I iced over them!  Crap.  Well, at least I got the outer shape iced out.  I let it dry and then started the tedious process of peeling them from the parchment paper (I made 6 extra, just in case).  There's an awesome video I came across from One Tough Cookie on youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8cwHFXWRvY
This helped me immensely...only one face broke! 

The other issue I had was that the underside of the faces didn't dry flat.  I guess the parchment paper rippled slightly while drying, so when I added the faces to the cookies, they didn't lay completely flat on the cookie.  And now insert me freaking out.  What if I add the face details and the whole thing cracks?  I can't possibly put this fragile cookie into a cellophane baggie...it will immediately break!  So I locked myself in the closet and ate chocolate calmed down and started thinking about alternate packaging ideas.  A.C. Moore is my reliable craft store...I found some small, white boxes with a window...perfect for individual cookies!

After settling the cookies in their boxes, I just used some scrapbooking paper I had in stock and dressed up the box a bit.  They're off to be delivered tomorrow to our cousin.

Happy Birthday Robert!! 

I. Love. Fabric.

I love fabric.  It makes me so happy.  On Black Friday, I receivedn an email from Fat Quarter Shop about their BF sales.  I went a little crazy...but it was SUCH a deal!  And when I received the package in the mail, it was like Christmas morning!  Everything was so pretty!  I've washed all the fabric and ironed most of it...

 My favorite is the argyle...and they had AWESOME Christmas colors!!!

I've also been thinking about different additions to my reversable headbands...hopefully I can introduce those in the New Year.  I would love to get to them sooner, but the Holiday cookies are calling!