Happy Holidays Everyone!

Merry Christmas Everyone!
Wishing you all a beautiful Holiday Season filled with people you love.

I'll be on vacation until early January!
See you in 2013!

Cookies for Santa!

Last year I saw these darling cookies by Sue at Munchkin Munchies...
Go look! They're super cute!
(I'll wait here)
Darling, right?!
So I wrote her a little email asking could I pretty please re-create her cookies,  and because she's as sweet as can be, she said yes!
(Thanks Sue, you're the best!)

I think Santa will like these, don't you?
(I hope so...mama needs a new camera!)

The snowmen were my favorite!

Every now and again I make a set of cookies that makes me giggle.
This is definitely one of those sets!

Alright....back to the ovens.

Hope your holiday baking is going well!

Snowflake Cookies

It's finally winter in Southern California.
We woke up this morning and looked out over a valley of beautiful, puffy, white....
...fog.
No snow.  

So I made my own.

Not great for making snowmen or sledding.

Pretty darn good with my coffee though,
 while I'm staring out at that fog.

Homespun Christmas Tree Cookie

At Cookie Con, there were lots of fun treats from our sponsors.

One of the best was a brand new cutter from Karen's cookies!

Pam from Cookie Crazie designed it and they made it just for her!

(you can buy one HERE)

Then Miss Pam asked me (and a whole bunch of other cookie ladies)  to join her in a little cookie decorating project! Of course I said yes! We could use our new Homespun cookie cutter anyway we liked! So I made these!

They're all sparkly!!!

There's a silver cookie (light grey icing sprayed with Duff silver food spray)  with a red tree and white pearl ornaments....

...and a silver cookie with a white tree and red pearl ornaments! Then I got a little crazy with the spray and turned some white sugar pearls silver! ooooooooooooo... pretty!

So I made a white cookie with a red tree, just so I could use those little silver pearls.

I can't wait to see what everyone else makes! Oh, right! No more waiting....here are all the cookies!

1 Ali – Ali Bee’s Bake Shop

2 CeCe – Tactical Baker

3 Laurie – Cookie Bliss

4 Andrea – Cupookie

5 Christine – Sugar Cravings

6 Heather – Sugar Nosh Treats

7 Lorraine – Lorraine’s Cookies

8 Penny – Grammie’s Cookies N Goodies

9 Nancy – Seasons of Joy

10 Kim – The Partiologist

11 Maryann – Cookie Artisan

12 Jen – Posh Pastries

13 Jennifer – Cookie Cutter Creations

14 Tricia – The Cookie Loft Girls

15 Elizabeth – Lizy B Bakes

16 Stephanie – Ice My Biscuit

17 Melissa – The Baked Equation

18 Liz – Arty McGoo

Miss Pam's not on that list!!! If you don't know Pam...she's the wonderful lady behind Cookie Crazie. She bakes beautiful cookies decorated with glaze and  donates all her profits to her mission work in the Ukraine. Her cookies are as beautiful as her smile and her spirit,  I hope you'll stop by her blog and read all about her amazing work!

My Favorite Personalized Christmas Cookies

These are my all-time favorite Christmas cookies.
I made them last year...you can see the post HERE

Since then, my boys have reminded me many, many, many, times that I didn't put THEIR names on them.

Whoops.

They were affectionately called 
"Those cute cookies you made, but didn't make for us..."

So like any good mom, I made them again this year.

This time, with the correct names on them!

The Christmas Cookies are Here!!!

Let's start the holiday off with a little humor, shall we?

What does Santa say to Mrs. Claus right before he leaves on Christmas Eve?

  That makes me laugh every time I read it. (I realize I'm probably the only one laughing...but that's okay)

Christmas cookie season has officially arrived!

Here they come! (These cookies are now available in my Etsy shop!) If you enjoyed this post, you might also like:
Christmas Cookies...finally!
Cookie Couture!
How to Embarrass Your Tweenage Son.

Call of Duty Cookies

Call of Duty, Black Ops 2....Cookies.
That is officially the strangest sentence I've ever typed.
If you have a 'gamer' in your life, you most likely know about this game...and how it just came out a week ago...and it's the coolest thing ever...and about the map-packs and zombie gear... and nuketown...
Oh my.
Like most mothers out there, I'm completely freaked out by the whole thing.
But if you can't beat 'em...join 'em, feed them cookies,  and insist they have 'A's in all their classes if they are even  going to think about turning on their Xbox on the weekends.

I thought I'd give you a little window into life with a tweenage boy, ready?

Me:  Hey Ethan, so this new Call of Duty game you're playing, what's it about?  

Is there a town that's been 'nuked' and are you guys running all over it shooting stuff after the war?

Ethan:  No, nuketown has nothing to do with Call of Duty.

Me:  but...What?  

Then why does is say nuketown on all the stuff, and there's even a missile in the '0'.

And there's a radioactive symbol.

Ethan:  Well...yeah. But there wasn't a war.

Me:  Then why is it called Nuketown?

Ethan:  It's a fake town where they test missiles.

Me: So nuclear missiles blew up everything and now you're running around shooting people?

Ethan:  Uh huh.

Me:...isn't that what I said?

Ethan:...(shaking his head and looking at me with pity) It's okay Mom.

The cookies rock.

Yup...that's life.
Now I'm thinking I should have made a Call of Duty cocktail for myself instead.

If you liked this post, you might also like:
How To Embarrass Your Tweenage Son
Cookies For The Hunger Games
My Date With Jack

What Happened at Cookie Con.....

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to spend 4 days with a group of incredibly talented cookie ladies.
I've mentioned once or twice that you have to be nice to make cute cookies and this weekend absolutely proved that without a doubt.
Welcome to CookieCon!!
(hosted and produced by Karen and Mike of Karen's Cookies)

This giant ballroom was our cookie home for the days we were in Salt Lake City.
Here we are listening to our presenters introduce themselves  and the first of HUNDREDS of giveaways from our generous sponsors!
Presenters
Julia Usher - Recipes for a Sweet Life Elizabeth Adams - Arty McGoo Maryann Rollins - The Cookie Artisan Alison Stinnett - Ali Bee's Bake Shop Callye Alvarado - Sweet Sugarbelle Glory - Glorious Treats Pam Sneed - Cookie Crazie Lisa Snyder - The Bearfoot Baker
Sponsors
Plastics in Print The Cookie Thing Kopykake Americolor The Cookie Cutter Company Nielsen-Massey American Tradition Cookie Cutters Country Kitchen Sweetart Spices etc. Designer Stencils Julia Usher CopperGifts.com Karen's Cookies Foose Cookie Cutters BRP Box Shop Kool Cookie Cutters Fondarific

I won Julia Usher's new book from Julia herself! (...she even signed it!!!)



We spent the weekend laughing and chatting and  finally meeting other bakers and bloggers that we only know through the internet.

Arty McGoo (left) lights up a room just as brightly as you would imagine her to.
(I'm in the middle)
And Miss Pam (right)...she doesn't know this yet, but I've adopted her.    Uh-huh, I have.
She's my new sister and we're going to decorate the world with Christmas trees together. They will be decorated with cookies.  
Her cookies will be covered in glaze, mine with royal icing,  and they will live in harmony and create world peace.

Here's Callye, Miss Sugarbelle herself!

She's lovely and gracious and sweet as can be.

...and we totally have baby boys that were born on exactly the same day of the same year!

I have no idea what that means...but how fun is that!?

I'm sure they'd be best friends forever if they'd met and would talk for

 hours about how much they just want a package of Oreos!

Miss Lisa!  The Bearfoot Baker!

Love her.  Just love her.

She's great.

I might even camp if it meant hanging out with her!

I met lots and lots of people...just not enough photos!

Too much laughter.

We left the hotel now and again.

Delicious dinners, shopping and .....

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir!

They were amazing...and I'm hoping they said a prayer for the crazy cookie ladies.

Know why?

We had to clean up this room after demo day.

The cookies were gorgeous....

tablecloths, not so much.

Karen and Mike are already planning the next CookieCon!

Hope you'll join us!

If you liked this post, you might also like:

A Lizy B Interview?

Faith, Hope and Joy cookies

Moms are Great

Happy Holiday Weekend!

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend with friends and family  as much as I am.

We'll be decorating our tree just as soon as Jack stops giving it hugs.