Upward Basketball!

It's the end of winter sports!  My boys tried Upward Basketball this year and we were so pleased with the program.

It helped to know lots of other children who were in Upward as well.  Made for some fun games, and the parents even got to socialize with each other.  :)

My boys had amazing coaches -- 

can't say enough good things about them!

Here's an order I did for a friend who's son was on the Eagles team.

I flooded orange on the cookie and immediately placed a royal icing transfer of the Upward star symbol on top.

I let it dry over night and then drew the black basketball lines on with a food color pen and piped on the wording in purple.

I did cookie favors for my seven and five year old's teams as well, but didn't write out Upward or their team name.

I just went with the star logo on a basketball.

I like both styles.

I was also going to make Basketball cake pops using my Babycakes Cake Pop Maker, but ran out of time - no surprise!

Instead, I ran out to Food Lion and snagged a box of Oreos, which I dipped in orange candy melt, let harden, and drew on Basketball lines with a food color pen.

Black food color pens come in SOOOO handy, sometimes!

They weren't perfect, but they WERE delicious!

Mickey and Minnie Cookies

I had a request for Mickey and Minnie cookies for this weekend!

I've done Mickey cookies in the past, but they were of Mickey's face.  I wanted to stay away from that style, since I've been warned it's a big no-no with Disney.

I did a little research and found the following design to be pretty popular in the cookie world, so when I ran it by the client, she loved it.  One designer, Carolyn, of The Occasional Cookie, caught my eye -- she is amazingly talented and had done this design for her own daughter's birthday.  They are super cute!  She has an amazing blog, and I really enjoy her tutorial on lollipop sugar cookies, which can be found here.  I can't wait to try these!

Here are my Mickey/Minnie sugar cookies:

They were so much fun to do!  I took the advice of mixing my extra colored icing together before adding black icing, and letting it sit before using it.  The black came out great!  At one point I was checking them, and I thought they had that "powdered look" - when you don't know if it hardened or not... that had me worried!  But they turned out great - whew!

Happy First Birthday to Emma!

Monster Truck Rally Time!

A friend of the family had 3 tickets to 

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus 

last week that they couldn't use.

She asked if we would be interested in them.  

After hesitating for one nano-second 

(I had never taken the boys into Richmond by myself, 

didn't know where the Collesium was, 

and had no idea what the date or time of the event was), 

I replied "SURE!  The boys would love it!"

And they did!

  Unfortunately, you had to use the tickets during the week, so the predicament was - do I take the boys out of school early (a big no-no with us, unless it's a doctor's appointment) or risk taking them in at 7:00 at night into the city, when it's dark, and they'll have to get up the next morning for school?

I opted for the lesser of two evils - taking them out of school early.

But this post isn't really about the circus, it's about a 

MONSTER TRUCK RALLY!

When I asked our friend why they couldn't use the circus tickets, she explained that it just wasn't a good time for them, and then joked "And someone gave us tickets to the Monster Truck Rally for the next week (lots of laughing)!"  

Now you have to understand, our friend and her family are not Monster Trucksters by any means.  They wouldn't have bought the tickets deliberately just to go to a Rally.  But they're open-minded and think it will be a hoot, which I'm sure it will be!

So I made them some quick and easy monster truck cookies as a way of saying thank you for the circus tickets and to get them in the rallying mood!

Hope they have a wonderful time!

A Frog and Queen Cookie Theme!

A request came in first for just a frog platter, then the challenge came to make it a "queen" theme as well.  I didn't have a frog with crown cutter (although I was wishing I did!), so I used my new frog cutter to make some frogs more feminine with crown and "Q" necklaces....  oh, and nailpolish.  A queen's not complete without beautiful nails!


I had a fun time making these cookies.  Happy with how they all came out. :)

The Queens:

 The Princes:

 To add to the theme, I used the Wilton Princess cutter collection - castle and crown cutters.  I had used the crown cutter before, but wanted a more regal look for this set.  I love the way the purple pillow stands out against the gold frame and red jewels of the crown.

 Here's the queen in her castle.

 And now joined by a couple of her prince frogs!

 I love this pic - this is how I propped up the cookies in my light box to take the photos.  I think they came out so much better doing them this way than before when I would just leave the cookie flat on the surface!

 The platter ready to be wrapped!

 It's a wrap!  On to delivery!

Camo Bluebirds - Ready for Spring!

Tonight I tried my hand at camo cookies!  I loved seeing Wonderland Cookie Company's camouflage hearts, then Sweet Ivy Confections camo ovals.   Cristin's Cookies recently posted a great camouflage tutorial and link-up which was the final push I needed to try this technique.  I had purchased a lovely love bird cutter from CopperGifts.com for Valentine's Day but never used it.   I thought it might be fun to see what it would look like covered in blues, whites, and pinks, so I had a little fun tonight decorating them!


Here they are, outlined and waiting to dry.  Notice the cracks on some - this was leftover dough I had that had been chilling in the fridge awhile and it comes out like that.  Still good to eat, though!  And once it's covered in yummy royal icing, noone will ever know... hehe

Beginning to decorate...  can you figure out it's a Friday by looking at this picture?  Good old Sam. ;)

And here they are!  I think I like the ones with blue camo breasts and pink camo wings the best, but I think they all came out cute.

Thanks, Cristin, for the tutorial!  I'm not afraid to do camo cookies, now!