Well it has been a VERY busy summer! Somewhere between working on the house and going to the beach I managed to squeeze in a few cookies!  I made these gray and white onesies for a friend's baby shower.  I think they turned out pretty cute. They live outside of Boston so naturally I had to put on a Red Sox B. Their last name also starts with B and they are having a boy so there were many reasons for the B!

                                                           

These UVM cookies were an order for a local hotel. They were going to put them in each guests room for a conference. I thought that was a really nice touch, I hope they liked them!  I used royal icing transfers for the catamounts which worked well. However I let the base layer of icing dry and then put the transfers on with some icing.  I do not recommend that.  I think it works much better to put the transfers on while the base layer of icing is still wet, much less breaking!

 

                                               

Go Cats Go!

A Bit of a Fixer Upper!

Well we just bought a house so cookie making will be on hold for awhile!  It's a bit of a fixer upper, but that's a minah thing...I love those little trolls!  Just to give you an idea of what I mean by fixer upper, here is the bathroom.         

Pretty awesome huh? There is a sliding door thing on the shower that is also lime green. It doses have this pretty door on the "garage" that my sister in law likes.

We are very happy though because the fixer upper also came with 13.5 beautiful acres.  There is a whole forest for our little one to explore.  We went to the circus yesterday, it was amazing.  This a a circus where all of the performers are kids and the money raised goes to charity.  I think our daughter is ready to enlist!  It is called Circus Smirkus www.smirkus.org maybe they will be coming to a venue near you! 

                             

 Cute little bugger!

    

   

I love all of the bright colors and clean lines, maybe I will be making some cookies after all! 

Painting on Cookies

Well summer is in full swing, we have even gone to the beach already! Kids love the beach which means I love the beach! They just play in the sand and run away from waves the same way kids have been playing on the beach for decades.  

I had started this collection of Juneau cookies on a very Jueauish day, that is to say dark and rainy!  Then we left for the beach and when we returned it was beautiful and sunny so the cookies took a sunny turn. 

                                                                     

                                                                     

The fly fisherman is my husband.  I painted this cookie from a painting I painted in Juneau when we were too poor to actually buy decorations for our apartment.  His arms turned out a little short in this one, sorry babe! It is a little bit harder to paint with food coloring than actual paint! 

I found these beautiful raspberry colored sprinkles at a nice grocery store a few towns over.  They have been sitting in the cupboard for awhile so I finally decided to use them.  I love the chevron pattern that has become so popular lately so I decided to try my hand at it!

                                     

                                   

I just piped on white royal icing in a chevron pattern and then dipped the cookies in the sprinkles spread out on a plate.  It smushes the pattern down a bit so you have to do some touch ups with a toothpick. 

Happy decorating!

Today my daughter and I painted egg wash on strawberry cookies.  It is so easy and kids love it!  After you cut out the cookies just paint them with an egg wash mixed with a little food coloring.  You don't need much of it so divide a whisked egg mixed with water between several different bowls and mix in food coloring.  My daughter is five but I am sure older kids would love this as well.

My daughter learned that it is difficult to add detail.  Her Black dots didn't really look like seeds!

She painted and repainted this foot several times.  I do not recommend trying to wipe off the egg wash from the cookie!

Here is the finished product.  These are great for kids because there is no pastry bag full of frosting to contend with.

These blue and white cookies were fun to make, I love the contrast of the two colors but they did not really turn out the way I had envisioned.  That happens a lot with cookies!  It didn't help that my husband thought all of the roses were pigs.  After he said that it was all I could see in the rose cookies...guess I need to practice my roses!

Happy Summer!!!!

                                                 

I have been playing with the church cookie a bit more.  I am trying to figure out how to get the names of the bride and groom on a banner hanging from the church.  I tried just using edible ink markers ( like I did for the people) but it didn't look right.  I think I will try royal icing transfers next.  That is where you pipe the design onto a silicone mat, let it dry and then fasten it to the cookie with icing.  They are delicate so you have to make a lot of them. 

Today is Memorial Day and I am not sure if we are going to go to the parade or not.  I would like to but I promised my daughter several days ago that I would take her to a McDonalds with a play place because she earned it on her potty chart. It might not seem like a big deal to go to McDonalds but for some reason she LOVES it and the nearest one is an hour away!   Argh why do I use the word promise? She never forgets when I promise her something...

I was thinking back to last Memorial Day and I remembered that I had made all of these cookies to sell at an artisan fair in town.  We ended up having a crazy rain/snow storm and the event was cancelled!  It was very disappointing. Although I don't know what was worse, making all of those cookies for nothing, or snow the last week in May!

                                                                        

Giant Cookie Cutters

                                          

My uncle just gave me these GIANT cookie cutters!  He found these beauties at a flea market in New Hampshire.  They are bronze and they are solid! Now I need to whip up about four batches of dough to make a dozen cookies.  The tulip cutter is especially large, I am thinking cookie pop but I am afraid it will be too heavy for the stick! How do you use giant cutters?

Filigree

I love making these swirly filigree cookies, it is really soothing once you get into the rhythm of it.  I like the smooth finish but you can also let the base layer of icing dry and then pipe on the filigree design to add some texture.

To make the bronze bead border I use Wilton edible shimmer dust.  You just mix it with alcohol or vanilla and paint it on.  It is a little bit time consuming but it just adds a little sparkle to the cookies and who doesn't want a little sparkle in their life?  Below are the cookies before I painted on the shimmer dust...

Well it is finally starting to feel like spring around here.  My husband even mowed the lawn and it smelled sooo good! The other day when we were outside playing we had a young moose visit us.  I have not seen very many moose in Vermont but this little guy was just hanging out by the road in front of our house.  Cars kept stopping to look at him but he didn't care.  When he did start to run my daughter said that she didn't know moose could prance.  So here is a photo of the dainty prancing moose!

 Happy Easter!  We had a great Easter in New Hampshire. The sun was shining and the kids were playing.  I love Easter egg hunts.  The kids always have so much fun and they don't really care if there is anything in the eggs or not, they just want to hunt for the eggs!  I made egg cookies for our daughter and our nieces and nephew.

                                                                

I also made my first cookie box filled with micro robin's eggs.  It was fun to make and it reminded me of hanging drywall in a house when I was an Americorps volunteer.  That may seem like a bit of a jump but let me explain! After the square cookies were baked I used a micro plane (which looks like a big file) to even out the sides of the cookies and square everything off.  It was just like using that big file to grate down the sides of the drywall to make it fit in the closets and what not.  It is sort of like a puzzle. 

                                  

The little cookies are really easy to pop in your mouth as you walk by so if you make them watch out, they disappear quickly! 

Weddings and Birthdays!

Well it is finally warming up here. We still have plenty of snow but the sunshine sure does feel good! I have been trying to come up with new wedding cookies.  These are the product of my brainstorming session.  They still need work but it is a start. 

  

Our daughter's birthday is on Monday so I made these owl pops for her preschool class.  As I was making them it donned on me that this was the first batch of cookies that I have made just for her! Oops  sorry about that ladybug!  Not that she doesn't eat plenty of cookies.  She should be my shelf life tester.  She doesn't care how old a cookie is, she will pop it right in her mouth! Disregard that statement Aunt Jane.  

                                       

I recently had an order for some Vermont cookies for a college student.  These cookies make a great addition to any care package. I remember how much I LOVED getting care packages when I was in college and then later when I was an Americorps volunteer in Alaska.  One time my mother sent me a package when I was working in Fairbanks. We lived in tents and my mother sent me a package and told me not to open it until my birthday.  After storing it in my TENT in ALASKA for a couple of days I opened it up and it was full of food!  Thanks mom, guess who else likes food in the wild in Alaska? Bears that's who!  But alas I was not eaten by a bear and I gobbled up all of the delicious chocolates and cheddar cheese. 

I have to say the Stowe logo gave me a lot of trouble!  I guess I need to work on that since we share a name!

Well my daughter and I are on a trip to New Jersey to visit my brother and his family.  It feels tropical down here, (we woke up to -10 again in VT this morning!) It is the little things right? A hotel pool and 40 degree weather go a long way! 

What a beautiful morning! The sun is shining and the thermometer is slowly inching upward.  I snapped these photos this morning after I dropped my daughter off at ski school, or snowboarding school, as my daughter likes to correct me with a little irritation in her voice.  Ahh she is only four... but the mountain did look beautiful this morning.

Here is the little bugger getting ready this morning, little cutie even when she is correcting me.

                           

Here she is shredding with my husband cheering her on!  Look out 2030 Olympics, here we come!

I also went for a walk this morning and took lots of photos of a frozen river.  There is just something about winter rivers that I find so soothing.  I need to make a cookie with these colors, they just make you feel cold inside. Which I don't know why you want to feel cold inside hmmm maybe I should rethink this cookie or save it for the middle of July! 

Happy Monday!

I am getting spring fever even though there are not actually any signs of spring yet!  My husband and I keep talking about a tropical get away so I decided to try out my new starfish cutter.

We used to live in Juneau, AK and at low tide you could see tons of starfish attached to the rocks.  They were beautiful and I remember them being this sort of purple color that is hard to replicate, but alas I will do it! Food coloring can sense fear...

My aunt Jane is always sewing beautiful skirts for our daughter.  I love the material she picks out and these three happen to be particularly spring-y.
 I made the birds into a cookie last year and I want to make the other two into cookies as well.

This cookie was my entry for an online cookie contest. I think I need to make them again, I love the fun colors!

We have had two pheasants hanging out around our house for the past couple of weeks. They like to eat the berries from our front tree. They are beautiful but we have no idea where they came from.

 Wow this photo looks black and white but it is actually a COLOR photo! I guess it is just a grey March day...

Seriously?

Seriously?!?

What happened to Global Warming!? 

This cold weather does however make for beautiful skies...

I got kind of fancy with this one.

I am exploring some Guinness ideas for St. Patty's day.  So in the name of research...

I hope the sun is shining in your corner of the world!