2013 NEW YEARS RESOLUTION 

Okay it's official - I need help with blogging.  I just don't know how these gals can have such awesome cookie blogs and actually have the time to bake, decorate, photograph and post their wonderful creations while simultaneously maintaining their CFO (chief family officer) positions within their households.  I think what I really need is to train that little "elf on the shelf" to stick around all year and do laundry, cooking, carpooling, grocery shopping, bill paying - well, you get the picture - so I can spend my days dreaming up cookie ideas (okay so I do that anyway) and actually baking.  Ahhh dream big right?

So I missed the first ever Cookie Con this past year that was held in Utah back in Oct. duh - don't know how that happened. But I am going in 2014.  If only there was early sign ups I could do it now before I forget.  Yes that happens a lot these days.  But I was still able to get some great info from those amazing bloggers collectively noted above. Except, of course, how to maintain an active blog and then how to get people to actually come and look at it.

But moving right along - my resolution for this year is to try to do just that.  If I can just blog then my hopes are this..."if I write it - they will come".  So we'll see, right?

So my wonderful, patient, inspiring, darling husband (who will heretoforth be referred to as DH) got me set up with a roll away bun rack after Christmas this year to help kick off my home based cookie business.

For those of you that don't already know, California has joined the ranks of Cottage Law states and starting  Jan 1, 2013 we can legally sell home baked goods from, well you know...our homes.  So awesome right?  There are of course requirements to the law but you can check those out at THE SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC LAW CENTER and read all about it there.

Here are some cookies I made over the holidays.

And finally - cheers! Happy New Year to all and wishing you a fabulous 2013.

Back 2 School Cookies

Spent most of September sharing plates and plates of back to school cookies.  My favorite cookie idea source aka flickr, did not let me down when I needed ideas for these platters.

A finished platter.

I did change my recipe up a bit and added tons of lemon flavoring in the cookie dough as well as the royal icing and I think they turned out great. Of course I love, love. love lemon flavored stuff.  The cookies had a refreshing taste to them - quite a bit different than my normal vanilla ones but they did get rave reviews.

Next up was a sailing regatta for my daughter's high school team.  She is a sailing crew for her high school team and I thought it would be fun to make cookies to send off with her when she goes to a regatta.  If anyone out there races for a sailing team or has kids that do (especially in southern California) you know that it's sometimes a lot of wait wait wait for the wind.  So I decided to make some fun cookies for the sailors.

These were received with gratitude and eaten up before you could blink.  So now I figured that I had my target group.  How can one go wrong with high school kids and food, right?

I'm so excited - today I learned that 6 people have actually viewed my blog.  Some from the US including Alaska and a few from Russia.  That is so fun!

So I continue now with my cookie journey.  The next thing that came up was Valentines day.  I decided to check out Flickr to see what kind of heart cookies were all the rage and boy did I find some amazing cookies out there.   If you ever want to peek into an amazing pool of talented people just venture on over to Flickr and take a look - it's both amazing and a bit intimidating at the same time.

These were my first ones. I made them for my daughters sailing team and I needed something that I could do very quickly as I was also hosting the team dinner for 30 kids and hubby was on a business trip - yikes. I decided to go for a kind of chanille look.  After the icing had dried overnight I simply added some extra icing to the top and then dipped the cookies in sanding sugar while the icing was still wet. Easy peasey and after a pizza dinner they were enjoyed whole heartedly by the whole team.

With some of the extra mini hearts I made this little set and put 3 in my hubbies lunch and 3 each in the lunches of my sweet girls for a little treat.

And then things got real pretty.  I did some pink and gray valentine themed cookies and then some darling heart lacey cookies with the technique picked up from cookies I saw on Flickr.

The year 2012 brought with it the Super Bowl XLVI which hosted the New England Patriots vs The New York Giants. To my delight our family was invited to a Super Bowl Party.  I decided to try my hand at my very first cookies designed by myself.

This took about a week of research on the computer because being the avid football fan that I am (not) I had no clue of anything about either of these teams... except of course that one of them was from New York.  I learned a lot about NFL and AFL and team colours and logos and jerseys and football stuff.  I printed my images off of google and set out to work.  First off I baked.  Then I made the icing.  Colouring the icing came next and lucky me these two teams had a lot of the same colours.  Finally the decorating.  (thank goodness I have a wonderful husband who didn't say one single word about the state of our kitchen during this time - or the rest of the house for that matter).

And here is what I was able to take to the party:

For the most part I was very pleased with this platter. But I was still struggling with icing consistency for writing and had not yet learned about clear vanilla or americolor bright white.  I even tried using the silver luster dust on the Patriots helmets but my first try turned out so horrible that my kids got to eat them.  Still need to work on that technique as well.  That's okay though - it's a learning curve - and when you can eat your mistakes how can one go wrong?

I have been learning the art of cookie decorating via some very talented ladies on the internet.  If you peruse through Pinterest you have no doubt seen photos of some of their very amazing works of art.  And here are some of my first cookies done with the lessons from the likes of Sweet Sugar Belle, Sweetopia, Cookie Craze, Ali Bee and a few others.

  

These were done in October 2011 for a
 County Fair at my kids school and were
 auctioned off as a fund raiser.  Sure hope
 the winner enjoyed them.  These were my
 very first royal icing cookies.

So after I tried my hand at the festive pumpkins I started to think about the holidays.  Luck would have it that someone from the kids school asked if I would make cookies for the faculty christmas party.  Yeah - a new challenge. So I pulled out some old holiday cookie cutters and began an entire day of baking.  Having read that the sugar cookie will stay pretty fresh for a very long time and would freeze well I thought it a good idea to stock up and get all my baking done in one day.  Here are some of the creations I came up with and the finished platter for the faculty event.

They were a big hit and I got lots a happy smiles from the teachers.

So with my confidence at a high point I read Sweet Sugar Belles posting on how to make sock monkey cookies and went right out to purchased the cutter and made these cute little holiday monkies...

The sweetest little winter monkey ever.

Now I am officially hooked.  UPS, FedEx and USPS are getting to know me very well as cookie cutters start arriving by the boxful.  LOVE _ LOVE _ LOVE shopping online. More time to bake of course.  And best of all - my whole family is getting into it.

I close for now but will continue the saga of my cookie journey (and how I developed my oCd-obsessive cookie disorder) tomorrow.