More Cookies!

I promised you all the rest of the cookies I made alongside my contest cookies and I'm here to show them to you. These were to bring to my family while we were spending a week on the beach, so they are just a bunch of fun cookies.

Birthday Pinwheel Cake!

I married into an awesome family. However, this awesome family has 3 June birthdays, all within about 5 days of each other (the birthdays are my MIL's, her sons,and my Sister in law who married into the family, in case you were wondering how they managed all those close birthdays). Really, who does that? It's like Christmas in June- people to buy for, lists to get, etc. Actually, it's kind of fun celebrating thing the all birthdays all at once. Thankfully, they are all willing to share, so we just do one birthday bash for all 3.

I knew I wanted to make a cake, but what to make for 3 people??? I had elaborate grand visions in my head, but thankfully reality intervened before I committed to anything in my mind. SO....I just picked a fun, summery cake that I'd been wanting to make for a while. Pinwheels and polkadots!

I got the idea for this cake from this blog here.

Happy June Birthdays!

Mother's Day Cookies

These cookies were fun to do for a number of reasons, 1) Yhey were for my mom and Mother-in-law 2) They were the first cookies that I've mailed to my mom (and by extension my dad, brother, and Sister-in-law) in Florida, so they finally got to try some of my cookies and see them in person! [Ang-I have no idea when, but you're family is definitely getting cookies one of these days too!] 3) I got to try 3 different cookie ideas that I've been wanting to try 4) I got my first experience at making a cookie basket!

Whew! Basically, these were awesome cookies to do! And thank goodness all my ideas lived up to expectations and turned out relatively as anticipated. Trust me, that's rare. There are many ideas in my head for cookies, that once I actually start decorating, just don't happen! I try to make them happen, but my cookies yell back at me and say they aren't gonna do it. Then I yell them, walk away and we have a stand-off for about 20 minutes, until I concede and do what they want. (parts of that may or may not be true).

To start with, I've done some brush embroidery before, but not on a lot of cookies at once and the flowers looked a little different. You may notice that there is only 1 or 2 cookies with the 2 flowers on them instead of one. I had intentions to do more, but just got in such a groove with the single flower ones that completely forgot to stop and do more of the other kind!
I also was able to really try to paint them with pearl dust (aka, the stuff the makes them glittery). I've dry brushed pearl dust on, but had yet to (successfully) paint it on. You can see it best in the 3rd pic here-it photographs a but funky, buts it like tiny silver glittery specks all over the flower! (I like sparkly things...).

I saw this cookie idea on Cookie Crazie's blog here. I thought it was adorable and knew I wanted to recreate it for my own Mom and MIL.

Here's what the cookies for my mom looked like before they got  put in little boxes and then in a bigger box with lots of padding so they'd make it across the country safely. They are packaged 2 to a bag (back to back). I love these toppers-so pretty and elegant, perfect for my mom.

I made the cookies for my MIL into a cookie bouquet. I had some trouble getting them to stand up properly, but it was a good learning experience for cookie bouquets.

Mario Brothers Cake!

My Brother-in-law's birthday was a few weeks ago and I offered to make him a cake. After coming up with a few ideas, I decided to go with a Mario Brothers cake. I thought it would be a fun throwback to childhood.

The outside is buttercream frosting with fondant decorations. The castle walls are made out of fondant and "glued" together with candy melts. I also attached sticks to the inside of each wall so I could stick it into the cake and have it stand upright (worked great, except a bunch of the icing came off with the castle when I pulled it out to cut the cake.

You'll notice that Mario is just a little print-out :( This saddened me, but there was no other option (other than not having Mario at all on the cake and that just didn't seem right!). I tried to have an actual Mario. Really, I did. My first thought (though she had/has no idea) was to see if my friend who is good at fondant figures could do one for me. However, she and her family got sick that week and so I didn't get to spend the time with her I normally would. Then, I figured, well I can do this! So I got started....and about halfway through I could tell it wasn't going well. He just wasn't looking right and I hadn't gotten anywhere near doing his face (which I knew would be the hardest part). I had already checked a nearby cake store for a plastic Mario figurine and they didn't have any. So there you go-that's how I ended up with a Mario print-out.

Cookies for J!

My MIL hired me to make some cookies to send to my husbands younger brother. I thought it was a great idea and a chance to find out how well cookies would ship.

I figured my previous selection of flowers and butterflies wasn't really appropiate for a young man, so i set about thinking of what I could do that he would enjoy. I decided I could send a variety of my tie-dye, swirly, marbled cookies in some manly colors (aka-not pink and purple).

After I came up with those, I wanted to come up with something else too. I started thinking about what my brother in law enjoyed and how I could incorporate something into a cookie. I thought about doing some soccer balls...and didn't feel like dealing with the whole multiple hexagons. He loves backpacking and camping, so I started thinking in that direction. I finally settled on a cookie depicting the Rocky Mountains since I know he loves spending time up in the mountains (on all those backpacking trips). I only found a couple of inspirations on the web, so I was more "on my own" than some of the other designs I've done.
Here's what I came up with...I like them, butd efinitely still want to brainstorm for how I can make them even better.

I took a picture of the cookies packaged that I sent to him before they got boxed up. The round ones actually have 2 cookies in each bag.

I wrote this a few days ago, but was waiting on to find out from my Brother-in-law what condition they arrived in. I was happy to find out they shipped great! None of them ended up broken, smooshed or hurt in anyway! Yay!

I also packaged a few of the other pretty ones you've been seeing in the past posts and shipped a few out to my super sweet step sister-in-law who's going through a lot lately. I was happy to hear she enjoyed getting them and that those also arrived in great condition! 

Helicopter Cake!

My Brother in Law's birthday was in the beginning of December and since he is really into RC helicopters, I thought it would be fun to surprise him with a helicopter cake (admission-the surprise factor may have had to do with uncertainty of how it would turn out in addition to a surprise just being fun).

I used my trusty pinterest and google search skills to find inspiration and then set about creating my own version of things I saw! I was really pleased overall with how it turned out.  I did find myself  slightly dismayed at how small a 9 x 13 cake is-haha. Its certainly big enough and feeds enough, but after looking at a bunch of professional cakes and watching too many episodes of cake boss, I had somewhat inaccurate estimations of the amount of cake I had to work with ;) oh well, I made it work anyways!

For those curious, I used butter cream frosting for the edges of the street, grass, and the stream. I used fondant (and cookie cutters) to create the helicopter pad and the rocks.
The bridge was made from graham crackers and fondant and was the only part I would do differently if I were to make this cake again. I was never really happy with how the bridge turned out but i didn't have the time or extra icing to re-do it.
The helicopter was a toy helicopter we had around the house.

Here are the pics-

Bouquets and Bouts

I was given an opportunity for my MIL's wedding to put together the Groom and Best Man's Boutonnieres as well as the  Bride's and the matron of Honor's bouquets. Putting together flowers aren't really my thing, though I love them and think they are gorgeous. My Sister-in-law (of my immediate family) is the flower one in our family (she put together all the flowers for my wedding and they were beautiful!). Well, she lives in another state and we're talking about my in-laws here, so I got to give it a try :)

The Best Man's Boutineer

The Groom's Boutineer
Photo taken by Marilee Photography

They ended up looking quite nice and it all worked out!

A wedding!

A Couple weekends ago, my MIL got remarried :) She married a great man in a sweet and simple ceremony that fit them perfectly. There were less than 30 guests and many were around the entire weekend for a weekend of fun, laughter, and good food.

My MIL has seen the pictures of cake pops I had previously made and had asked me to make some for the wedding in lieu of the traditional wedding cake. I was thrilled to make them. She gave me no specific colors, just that she wanted bright colors. I took to the candy color options I had and spent time just figuring out how many different colors I could come up with (in the effort of full disclosure, this *may* have been more about me playing around and having fun than about the cake pops themselves). After being torn between 2 color combinations (and I'm still only 90% convinced I chose the right one), I decided upon blue, purple, and pink.

I was asked to make them with white cake, which was fun since I hadn't done it before. At the last minute, I realized I would need an additional cake so I decided to bake a red velvet cake as well. I'm not sure if I will make red velvet again since myself or my husband didn't like it nearly as well as the other flavors I have made. If I do make it again,  I will need my husband around to take pics because it was quite the colorful and messy experience! The white cake tasted really good.

Here are the pics of the final products...

Painting Nails

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I spent a week with my family in NC. It was a lot of fun and with 6 nieces and nephews under 8, quite entertaining as well. I love watching little kids minds work and process things. My Sister in law became the instant favorite by painting my two nieces nails,-fingers AND toes. They are 2 and 6 and enjoyed it tremendously.
Check out the picture-

Now take a closer look at the Bethany's (the littlest) hands....Do you see her nails? nope-but in her 2 yr old brain she's doing what I asked-showing them off. I told her I couldn't see her nails and so I asked her to turn them around (and showed her with my own hands). She looked at me and then Mikayla with a very confused expression and after about 30 seconds of moving her hands in various ways, this is what I got

Don't you just love this?