Oh Baby! How Sweet It is to Love You!

Earlier this Spring, one of my dear church friends had a beautiful baby girl.  The Women's Ministry at our church had a baby shower for sweet Lila Margaret, which happened to be the day before her baptism.  At the time, I also happened to be short on cash in the gift-giving budget, but long on ideas for beautiful cookies to celebrate the birth and baptism of this special baby girl, so Momma and Daddy got a gift basket from Sarah's Sweet Shoppe, filled with yummy cookies! ;^)

These "sign" cookies were my first attempt at using a "#1" tip for icing decorations.  Even with that small of a tip, it took several tries to squeeze all of those words on the big cookie! ;^)

 My wishes for their sweet family!

The "Daughter of the King" onesie is my favorite!

 I baked some of the cookies on sticks, so that they would "stick" up at the back of the basket. ;^) That backfired on me when one of the sticks broke out of the cookie while I was putting it in the bag.  No problem.  I just took another cross cookie and used Royal Icing to "glue" the stick back in place and covered it with the extra cookie. ;^) Extra cookies save the day (again)!

Top Right Cross reads: "Lila Margaret ~ Fearfully and Wonderfully Made"

In the final gift basket, I ended up hiding the small hearts down inside the basket to hold the other cookies in their places better.  After this photo was taken, I put the whole thing in a gift bag and tied it with a bow.  It was a beautiful gift (if I do say so myself...;^)) and Rachel appreciated the time and effort that went into creating such a personalized gift of love.  Besides, who really needs more baby clothes anyway, right?

The finished Gift Basket with the Hearts tucked inside!

I also made these baby hands and feet, but they didn't make the cut for the basket.  It was fun to try my new cutters, but I wasn't completely happy with how they turned out, this time. ;^)

Congratulations Rachel and Johnny!
Happy Baptism Lila!

Love,
Mrs. Rose

  

Happy Easter!

Wishing you all an amazing Easter!

These are the Easter cookies that I made for my daughter's school auction last week!

Sweet little lambs - Thank you, to Marian from Sweetopia for the tutorial and Georgeane from LilaLoa for tutorial on the "dotty" ones!

Brush Embroidery Eggs - I love the look of these...  Although, I need to learn that "less is more" in the decoration department.

My curious K. loves butterflies... so I made these in honor of her. ;^)

"Rejoice"  "Hallelujah" "He is Risen"

Fun Easter basket filled with Eggs - Thanks for the tutorial Callye!

I love this cherry blossom cookie too!
Thanks for the tutorial from Montreal Confections!
I really wanted to try this technique on some tea pot cookies (that I will share next week), so this was my practice cookie.

This was my first attempt at a "lace work" cookie.  It is WAY hard.  I will have to practice this more...Recently, Callye at Sugarbelle's had a great tutorial on piping lace on cookies, so I thought I would give it a try.  It probably would have gone more smoothly if I had actually followed her wonderful instructions.  Oh well, the colors are pretty...

Some of my favorite creators of this kind of cookie are:

• Nadia at My Little Bakery
• Alison at Ali Bee's Bake Shop
• Hani at Haniela's 

I loved these crosses!   Thanks for the idea and tutorial, which I copied completely for these practice cookies, Melissa!

One of my favorite Easter decoration is the sugar egg that we bought my oldest daughter several years ago.  It was too pretty to eat, so we have saved it!  I remember having similar eggs as a child.  A great little candy shop in Kansas City sells them and will even personalize them for you.  I also saw some at the World Market this Easter season.  There's all had bunnies and chicks in them, which were super cute, but I LOVE the ones with a cross or an empty tomb in them.

I did make one effort at an empty tomb cookie with some leftover frosting... It didn't turn out the way it looked in my head.  This one goes back on the list to try again next year.  What I did like about the cookie was the fun technique of making the stone speckled by using colored sugar (I didn't have any black, so I made my own following this tutorial from Callye at Sugarbelle) and sprinkled it on like Georganne suggested for her "Easy Speckled Eggs."

This cookie had two lives.  It was a turquoise Easter Egg that got over flooded.  Then, I realized that I was out of egg cookies, so I scraped it "clean" and created this cookie.  I love how the flood left a "washed" look for the sky.  I might even try it on purpose next time.

At Easter time, we talk about how eggs symbolize "New Life" specifically, the new life that we have in Christ.  This year, we have a momma robin who has built her next on one of the support beams under our  deck.  She has three little eggs in her nest.  I love the nest symbolism of home, comfort, warmth, too, and have often thought of our home as a nest, especially after a wonderful discussion about it with to Mary Catherine Newman a few years ago! (Thanks, MC!) We can actually peep through the cracks in the floor boards and check on the eggs.  If you stop by my home and happen to see one or more of my girls laying face down on the deck, now you know why.  

Wishing you and your nest a Blessed Easter!

Sarah

St. Patrick's Day Musings...

A Trinity Cross

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

Actually, we don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day in a big way at our house.  We will wear green shirts.  We will eat green shamrock pancakes, because it is fun.  On a good year, we might even go to a parade, if it doesn't make mommy tired just thinking about it.  We won't really talk about Leprechauns (except to remind our girls that they are just fun imaginary characters) or chase after their pot of gold...  We don't believe in luck... so there isn't much to say about that.

Before I mixed up my green icing...
I just used white and covered it with green sprinkles.

One thing, that we will definitely do though, is talk about who the real St. Patrick was and why we celebrate his day.  He was a real person.  He did not believe in God.  He was captured by bandits and taken to Ireland.  He was a slave and a sheep herder.  He was alone and afraid, and he prayed to God to save him.  God did!  Then, Patrick studied the Bible and soon he wanted to go back to Ireland to tell the people there about Jesus.  He was the first missionary to Ireland.

We will talk about the symbol of the Trinity on the crosses (above) and how there is no beginning and no end to their design, just like God, who is infinite,  and has been from eternity past and will be for into eternity future.  (Thank you to Anne at the Flour Box Bakery for the inspiration for these crosses.  You really should go see it... Her cross is AMAZING!)

We will talk about the shamrock and how it is also a symbol of the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit).

We will talk about the daffodil and how flowers are a symbol of death (when you plant the dead looking old bulb in the Fall) and new life (when it blooms as a beautiful new creation in the Spring).




 We will talk about how we are all like sheep and are prone to go our own way, but Jesus, the Good Shepherd, watches over us and takes care of us.  (Thank you to Callye at Sugarbelle and Marian from Sweetopia for sharing the guest post on how to make these cuties!  I guess if I had actually read the whole post, I wouldn't have ended up with the great big pile of icing in the middle... oh well!  They still tasted good and looked cute.)  

We will talk about rainbows and the beautiful symbol of God's covenant love that they represent.

We will have lots of fun things to talk about...
We might even eat a cookie that looks like a funny green hat. ;^)


Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Cheers!
Sarah

Reader R's cookies - She is becoming quite the decorator!

P.S. - I did have fun decorating cookies with my oldest daughter,  Reader R.!  She says "I love FLOOD!"  Too cute!  Her cookies turned out great too!

Here are our pancakes too!  Reader R. and Lil' L. were so excited.  Curious K. was not too excited about the green breakfast that looked strangely like broccoli.

Cookie-d Memories: My Magnum Opus

Have you ever thought... "This is it!  I'd better stop now,
because it could not get any better than this?"  

This is how I feel about these very special cookies.  I am not sure that I will ever love any cookies more than these "Happy Birthday" cookies I made for my very dearest friend, Dana, who is celebrating a big birthday this year.  As my gift to her, I created these cookies, which show not only where she has been, but my wish for her future and the foundation for the wonderful woman she is.

Dana and I meet in college at William Jewell College, in Liberty, MO.  We were kindred-spirits from day one and have been best friends ever since!  She is younger than I am, so we didn't always have our adventures that the same time... but we have so many memories in common it was almost like cookie-ing my own life story!

My favorite college English professor, Mike Williams, once said "Is a tree ever just a tree? No, it is a tree laden with deep symbolic meaning."  Well, is a cookie ever just a cookie?  Maybe.  But not it this case... each cookie is a cookie laden with deep symbolic meaning. (This is your warning... if you don't want all the sappy details of the cookies of my life, and can live with the guilt... bail now!)


My birthday wish for Dana, although it wouldn't all fit on the luggage tag, was that:

"Where ever life takes you,
May you always have your faith,
your family & your friends,
your compass & your big backpack."

(Please graciously ignore that it says "Whereever" with no space.  I have never been a good speller. A former teacher used to say that "My mind just worked too fast to bother with getting the letters in the right places." [Which by the way is why I had such a hard time with college prep vocab, not because I didn't know the definitions, but because I couldn't spell the words.]  However, now that I am trying to help my Reader R. learn to spell, I am convinced that I am just silly and lazy in that area of life.  I mean really, how long would it have taken for me to google which "Where ever" or "Wherever" to use... [twenty-two seconds, because I just did it to figure out which was right before I wrote this], but instead, I just did it and hoped no one would notice that it wasn't right, if it wasn't, which I wasn't convinced of, until I googled it a second ago.  Of course, I also knew, deep down that I couldn't just let it slip by now that I knew that it was incorrect, but rather, had to point it out to the rest of the world and admit what I goof I am... instead, I will just say "My mind was working too fast to bother with getting the letters in the right places" and leave it at that.)

This cookie is for Dana's faith.  Her strong faith gives her true joy and gratitude, even in the difficult times.  She is an amazing sister and such an inspiration and encouragement to me.  (OK, are you still with me?  Was that deep symbolic meaning too much for you?)

These cookies represent Dana's family!  Her mother LOVE Mickey Mouse, so that cookie is for her parents and her family of origin.  She is married to a wonderful man named David, so the heart is their monogram. And she has two precious children, a girl and a boy.






This is my cookie.  (Yes. I cookie-d myself into her present.... tacky? A little, maybe, but we are dearest friends.)  So, yes, if I were a cookie, I would look like this.  (Just stick around, I may turn into one yet.  They say "You are what you eat.")  No, seriously, I love tea pots and my last name is Rose.  It doesn't get any more simple than that.  (OK, except for the cross.  That one was a give-away.)  What I love about this cookie, is that I tried the brush embroidery that Alison at Ali Bee's Bakeshop taught me!  Thanks, Alison!

The mortarboard is for our Alma Mater and the value of the education and life lessons that we learned there.  The compass is actually the Outward Bound logo.  We both spent 14 days in the Florida Everglades, canoeing and serving on an Outward Bound High Adventure trip during college, but also it serves as a reminder of Stephen Covey's concept of "True North" and always knowing what is really important to you.  The "Big Backpack" is symbolic of hopes and dreams.  We were recently discussing that although we are officially grown-ups and are working hard to de-clutter our homes, one of the seemingly odd items that we cannot seem to part with is our "Big Backpack" that we used to hike all over Europe.  (The squiggles in the background are supposed to be a journal entry.)  These two cookies are also fun because they are the first time that I tried painting on a cookie.  Thank you to Liz, a.k.a. Arty McGoo and Alison from Ali Bee's Bakeshop for the inspiration and the great tutorials.

"Oh the places you will go!"  During college, Dana and I both studied oversees in Oxford England, not at the same time.  We also both had the same internship in New York City, not at the same time.  I also had a Dora the Explore potty training sticker of Eiffel Tour on my shirt as I was decorating, so I toddled off into Na-Na land and created an Eiffel Tour sticker, hoping that she, too, like Dora and myself, had been to Paris. (Deep huh?) Turns out, she has a really great story about meeting a mutual friend and sorority sister under the Eiffel Tour, that I am sure I have heard at some point in the last 15 years and just happened to subconsciously bring up in time to make the perfect cookies for her birthday.  Thank you to Anne at the Flour Box, who convinced me that yes, I could make a telephone booth cookie, and Kim at the TomKat Studio for the tutorial on how to make an Eiffel Tower.  Although, both would have been easier with a KopyKake projector than drawing them by hand, looking at Dora the Explorer stickers for reference.

So, I individually-wrapped each cookie and bundled up our memories in a gift basket.  I added the outer-wrap so that they wouldn't spill out, and I VERY carefully delivered these delicious wishes to my very best friend.   (By the way, it is very hard to get a good photo of a gift basket... sorry.)

We laughed.  We cried.  We smiled so much our faces hurt, like rush in college.  We shared memories.  It was wonderful!  Thank you Dana for having a birthday, so that I could make these cookies!  (Which turned out to be a "for-you-for-me" gift... sorry!)

"We will always be dear old friends, 

until we are old and senile, 

then we will be dear new friends again."

I also want to say a brief thank you, my husband and my girls for supporting my cookie dream, to my parents for providing so many of these life-forming experiences, to my family and friends for buying my cookies, to all of my cookie mentors (whom I have never actually met, but feel like we are close friends), but especially Jodi at Wonderland Cookie Co.who taught me not to be afraid to link to cookies that are prettier than mine, and to my almost 100 followers who read my ramblings on a regular basis.  Thank you! 

Cheers!
Sarah