Mickey Birthdays

(Short and sweet today!)

I have made a couple more Mickey themed cookie sets over the past month or so.

First was a Mickey and sports themed second birthday for a friend's adorable son.

And a Mickey's Clubhouse 1st birthday party for another little cutie.



Thank you Kristen & Kate!

Hello Kitty

I don't really have a background story to tell on Hello Kitty cookies as I don't remember her being a big thing when I was growing up. (At least not in my world anyway.) However I was excited to make these for a birthday party since creating something I have not done before is always my favorite. We decided on the Hello Kitty face as was as her bows with the birthday girl's name on them. Instead of packaging these at my typical 5 a.m. time, I was able to photograph them once the sun came out, so these pictures make me happy. (Thanks for always tolerating my dull photos - you'd be sad to know that I actually have a decent camera but do not have ever much light to work with.)

Thank you Sharri!

Sunny Days...

We have decorated a LOT of Elmo cookies around here...and even a Sesame Street order or twenty, but never before had I received a request for Grover, Bert & Ernie to join in. Always happy for a change in cookies, I was excited to draw the new characters. They were for an old friend's daughter's second birthday. (I made her first birthday party cookies too - love that!)

So in the end we had a rather complete cast of characters (minus a certain grouch) heading to the party...

Thank you Kara!

Tractor Time

I am not a girl who grew up on a farm, so when I think of tractors I automatically think of riding lawnmowers. :) True story. In fact I always had a strange fondness for mowing my parents' lawn growing up when they had a riding mower. They never once asked me to do it, but it was one of my favorite things to do for some reason. Maybe it was the time in the sun, or the alone time with music, or maybe it was the satisfaction of seeing my work pay off. I really don't know.

Anyway, onto the cookies for today. I had two parties a couple of weeks ago that worked tractors into their theme. The first was a birthday celebration for 2 brothers. One likes Batman and one likes tractors so their mom and I decided on half & half.

(Random personal Batman fact: The only movie I have ever walked out on in my life was one of the Batman movies. Thankfully there was no movie viewing going on here - just cookie decorating.)

The other party was a tractor themed second birthday party. There were a lot of plaid accents worked into the party so we played that up in the cookies too.

All three birthday boys are adorable and I hope they had a great time at their parties. Thank you Melissa and Jen!

Tinkerbell Cookies

So many things have changed since I was little. Minnie Mouse apparently now wears a pink dress, the cartoon Muppets are practically vintage and there is a list of Disney Princesses a mile long that I have never heard of. That being said when a friend asked me to do Tinkerbell cookies for her daughter's third birthday party, I was already ahead of the game thanks to a local little girl who has subjected me to the updated Tinkerbell videos way too many times. I knew she had undergone a little bit of a makeover since the 80's and for once didn't have to do much research on the animated world of 2012. My bachelorette bustier cutter quickly turned into Tinkerbell's mini green dress and we were in business!

The party included every detail a Tinkerbell-lover could dream of and I was happy to be a part of it.

Thanks Amy...and happy birthday once again to Little Miss Paige!

Getting in Character

There is no doubt that this blog has served as a creative outlet for me. You can constantly find me in the middle of a project and it has been really nice to have people to share those things with. The extra "projects" have certainly been limited lately by the amount of cookies I have been making. That's okay though because they have forced me to work on my drawing skills, particularly with all of the character cookies I have created. These cookies are by FAR the most challenging and time consuming and I will admit that whenever people ask me for these I get nervous. However I think I have done a pretty good job replicating thus far. Of course there are requests for the classics, but some of these I had to do a little research on and get with the times!

So I thought this morning I would share my current collection of character cookies...it should be interesting to see what this will look like a year from now!

Have a great week everyone!

Angry Birds

Angry Birds. Sure, I had heard of it a while back. I didn't convert to an iPhone until over the summer though and did not download the game itself until I was on a long car trip back in November. Turns out I was not a pro at the game whatsoever. Later that very weekend I downloaded the game my friend's daughter saw it on my phone. She proudly proclaimed, "Oh! My brother (who is five) loves Angry Birds - he beat the whole game!" That cracked me up. Of course a five year old could beat a game I couldn't really even grasp the premise of. ;)

I know Angry Birds is quite popular right now. (If only I had thought of it!) A friend of mine made her son an amazing Angry Birds birthday cake over the summer and I knew it was only a matter of time until I made them in cookie form. Enter a friend who asked me to make them for her seven year old son's birthday party. I went with the three "birds" on his invitation and had a lot of fun making these, with my favorite part being the addition of the sky/clouds.


Thankfully it did not inspire me to try another hand at the game...I'll stick with Words with Friends.

Thank you Janelle!

Minnie Mouse

Oh Minnie Mouse...hands down my favorite of the classic Disney characters. I have photos of my first meeting with her at three in Disney World and then again many years later when although of course while it was not nearly as magical, she was still my favorite.


Based on my eight and under friends' interests these days, the Disney princesses seem to be giving Miss Minnie a run for her money. (Maybe her costume change to pink will assist in getting back that fan base?!) Anyway, when a friend asked me to make Minnie-themed cookies for her daughter's birthday party recently, I was happy to hear that MM is still popular. Since I already had done a Mickey collection, I was looking forward to making some for his leading lady.


You should have seen the matching cake the birthday girl's mom made - it was impressive! I don't think I will try to tackle that until I am hosting my own Minnie Mouse party some day.

Thank you Niki!

Storybook Cookies Take Two

As mentioned in my 2011 recap, my first round of storybook characters proved to be a favorite. So when a friend asked me to make some for another storybook-themed baby shower I was happy to give it another go! The requests had two new characters on the list - Paddington Bear and Winnie the Pooh (the original version) while "The Cat in the Hat" and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" remained consistent favorites.


I received a note from the hostess saying that these were a "major hit" and couldn't have been more excited about that.

Thank you Missy!

M-I-C-K-E-Y...

Wow, it has been almost a week since I blogged. I've been trying to maintain my Facebook page a little bit but blogging took a backseat to life last week. We're home from a wonderful wedding weekend that I'd love to tell you about later this week however for now we are going to talk Mickey Mouse cookies.

My long-time friend's son turned two a few weeks ago and the birthday boy chose a Mickey theme. His grandpa took care of the cake (and did a great job I might add) while I handled the cookies. I of course wanted to represent the actual character and then went the whimsical route for the other cookies.


My friend and I agreed that our favorite cookies were the "twos" that I attached little ears to...


The birthday boy was not partial to one particular shape...he was open to them all. ;)

HAPPY Birthday once again to you Jackson and thank you to my dear friend K!

Boys vs. Girls Birthday Theme of Choice

About a month ago I made cookies for my good friends' children. Their birthdays are four years and one week apart and it was fun to see the difference in their interests.

Of course mom and dad had to step in to communicate the one year old little brother's wishes. These days he is into the Berenstain Bears and cars. I kept that in mind and mixed in a few other birthday cookies to make it a festive mix. I received a CUTE photo of little J enjoying one of his "Brother Bear" cookies and he looked as though he gave it two thumbs up!


Big(and much more sophisticated of course) sister chose a "princess and horse" theme for her cookies. I have been a part of A's life from the beginning and have loved seeing her girly side develop. This cookie theme was a perfect choice for the birthday girl and when I went to her house to drop them off, the first thing she did was confirm that I had remembered the horses. ;) Then she asked me if I had included a Buzz Lightyear cookie. (???) Oh well, I guess maybe we know next year's theme already! To carry out the princess theme I included sparkly shoes, dresses, scepter wands and of course a castle. (I am sure Buzz would prefer not be be wearing a dress and sparkly heels anyway!)


So happy (now belated) birthday A & J! Looking forward to seeing what you're into next year.

Sesame Street 2nd Birthday Party

So yes, we lost the BIG game. Thankfully I had a very happy event to help distract me from that. Over the weekend we drove to our good friends' daughter's second birthday party. The theme was Sesame Street and the bday girl's mom left no detail unattended.

I offered to bring cookies and ran with the theme. We decided on character cookies as favors and "S" and "2" cookies to be served alongside the cake (which was ordered from a local bakery - so cute!)


(Be on the lookout this week for a tutorial on how to make those topiaries!)



It was so fun to watch the kids' reactions to the cookies...that always make the hard work MORE than worthwhile. Needless to say a good time was had by all.

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Tangled

Recently when I received a request for Rapunzel cookies, I had a feeling they were going to be based on the "new" version of an old fairytale...and I was right. I thought through how to bring them to life and focused in on a few things...Rapunzel's dress and crown, the castle complete with ivy and a long blonde ponytail and Maximus the horse.


They won the approval of an adorable birthday girl, whose favorite was the dress since that was what she was wearing for her fete. ;)

Thank you Helen! So glad you girls enjoyed the cookies.

Olivia the Pig

Even though I have never owned one "Olivia the Pig" book, I always think they are adorable when I pass them in the bookstore. ("Olivia Goes to Venice" particulalry appealed to me!) So when I was asked to make Olivia the Pig cookies for a birthday party, I was excited. The only problem? No such cookie cutter exists and I could not find an image online that was the correct size to make a template from. Enter my parents to the rescue who went to the library on my behalf and returned with three books for me to choose from. (Seriously, they are the best!) So, I traced the outline of Olivia in the size I wanted and then used it as a template to hand cut around. Thankfully I only needed to do eight actual Olivias or that may have been a timely endeavor.


I free handed the rest of the design and am pleased with the end result.


Hopefully the birthday girl Olivia agrees. :)

Thank you once again Paola, party planner extraordinaire!

Storybook Character Cookies

I recently made storybook cookies for a book themed baby shower thrown by LML Events and Design. I was working with Lindsay, who had collected a list of the mom and dad-to-be's favorite stories as children. The list included The Berenstain Bears, The Velveteen Rabbit, Clifford and Curious George. We then decided to add in a couple other classics including The Hungry Caterpillar and The Cat in the Hat. Of course I could never compare to their fabulous illustrators, so I stuck with my own take on these famous characters.


(My husband and I ended up favoring this guy...)


These cookies was certainly a labor of love and I hope they went over well with the guests of honor.

Thank you Lindsay for having the faith in me that I could do this! I am thankful for the challenge and proud of the results. ;)

Thomas the Train

I had a really fun time last week making some Thomas trains for the most adorable three year old! I did a little research before making these and was surprised to learn that Thomas is different from 'The Little Engine that Could.' I guess I need to brush up on my train books some day. :)

These cookies were unique for me in that I did some preparation in advance for them. I made my first batch of marshmallow fondant (will definitely be doing that again) for the faces and piped royal icing eyes a week or so in advance to make sure his face had some dimension.


The birthday boy's mom reported that the cookies were a hit and thanks to her I now have another character in my arsenal of tricks.

HAPPY 3rd birthday little R and many thanks to you JoLaine!

Elmo's World

Growing up, I didn't watch Sesame Street (I was a Muppets kind of girl.) These days, however, ALL of my friends' children seem to adore Elmo. Every house I go to has at least one dancing/laughing/ticklish Elmo and "Melmo" seems to be on the first word list of many.

So when my friend asked me to make Elmo cookies for her daughter's second birthday, I jumped at the opportunity knowning that this would most likely be the first batch of many Elmo cookies to come.


Thank you Decia...and happiest of birthdays to little Miss E!

Mickey Mouse Club

One Preppy Cookie has given me the opportunity to reconnect with friends and coworkers from the past. That being said, I was happy to receive a call from a friend at a former job asking me if I would be willing to make some Mickey cookies for his son's third birthday party. He did not want faces but instead wanted the Mickey theme captured along with a bit of personalization. With little time to plan and no Mickey cookie cutter on hand, I had to improvise and learn the world of hand cutting cookies. I made a paper stencil and got to work!


These cookies went to one of the cutest three year olds I have met and I really hope he liked them. Thank you Marc!