I made a cake

My dear friends Sterling and Leisel were married this weekend and asked if I could make the cake. I haven't ever used fondant, but some lovely ladies I know (my mom and my friend Melanie) have; and since they were willing to help me I agreed to do the cake. I think it turned out beautifully!

It's coming!

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Don't just settle for roses again this year, give your love something they can really enjoy! Perhaps some cookies???

I will even throw in a custom message from you to your loved one:

February 14th is also Arizona's birthday. So even if you dont celebrate Valentines day, I anticipate your order of a Arizona flag and Cacti cookies.

$15/dozen

Email s.stinocher@gmail.com to place an order

Let Your Light So Shine

The young women in my ward had their New Beginnings program tonight. I was sad that I couldn't be there (I had to work), but I was happy to be able to contribute! When 2 of my girls asked me if I could make some cookies I happily agreed and produced some delectable little light houses.

Doctrine and Covenants 115:5 Verily I say unto you all: Arise and shine forth, that thy light may be a standard for the nations.

Color Pop

The focus of today is the book shelves flanking my TV set. In my old house they were covered with books and games, the one on the right was white, and the one on the left was a light wood veneer. The new house, however has bookshelves built in all over the place and these guys were left without a home. So I painted them a dark brown to sort of match our TV stand and now I need to accessorize them somehow. They need some color. 

Yesterday my mom and I went to Deseret Industries and found 7 clear flower vases for under $5.00!! We bought some glass paint and I went to town:

I think they will be adorable in the dark brown bookshelves! 

Now What??

Well, Christmas is over. I was given several items to help me update my house a bit, so its almost time to start major projects! I will post more about that later though. FIRST I need you to help me decide what to do with the picture frames below. I just put things in them for Christmas, and now I need some cute/creative ideas for the rest of the year. Whomever gives me the idea that I end up using wins a dozen cookies with one of my new chocolate molds on top!

  

This was just a practice run. the cookies you win will have beautiful clean molds on top :-) These are the frames I need ideas for:

Can you help me please??? Especially the big frame. I'm tired of pictures of me and Scott all over our house.

Christmas time is here!

Well now that I've totally missed the opportunity to post my real Halloween cookies. And my darling Thanksgiving cookies... It's CHRISTMAS! It is always surprising how quickly Christmas sneaks up. This year it snuk up on me in the form of cookie orders! One day my schedule was wiiiiiide open. The next? 21 dozen cookies looming over me. To be fair- only 16 dozen were orders, the other 5 were for my own goodie plates. And this past week I only made 13 dozen. So here are pictures! because that is what is really important.

 

13 dozen (or 156 individual) cookies.

  

Santa Claus is coming to town!

Some of the finished cookies

And a snowflake. One of the few I've seen in my lifetime.

commitment issues

I think I may have commitment issues. Please don't tell Scott. I have a hard time updating this blog very often, much like the problem I have with exercising.... dog training... house keeping... I go through spurts where I'm doing a great job and then there are extreme lulls. (you can really tell Scott if you want, he already knows)

Anyway I made some Hello Kitty cookies and some Mustache cookies. they turned out pretty cute. My brother, Jason, came over the day I was working on them and took 10,000 pictures. Please note that all of these pictures were taken with his iPhone, not with a fancy camera.

It was like a party. So you will get a more exclusive look at the cookie decorating process. here it goes.

All my cookies start with a plan. Making these beautiful sketches helps me to know what colors I need and to see how I am going to layer my frosting.

Then I mix the colors (just making frosting takes me anywhere from 20-40 minutes)

The next step is outlining the shape and then filling it with the flood icing. I have to push the flood over the outline with a toothpick to get that smooth final finish.

Add any pattern I want in the background while the flood icing is still wet, that way it will all be one flat surface.

Put the basic shape on.

This is a rare opportunity to see me working on cookies. as you can see I work really hard to look my best while i work ;-)

Start adding details

AND COOKIES! Hello Kitty with a Mustache.

Don't forget to have fun with cookies!

I also made some pretty adorable cookies for my cousins baby shower this week. Unfortunately, Jason didn't come over to take pictures, so I only took one. Here it is!

They were a hit!