The Whole Story

 I know last week I was a little inconsistant on my blog.  I promise by the end of this post you'll understand why.  There is some stamping in this post, stay with me.  Last week was one of those weeks where everything was planned all at the same time, a HUGE oversight on my part!  Saturday we (my Dad, and sisters) threw a surprise birthday party for my mom.  My sisters and their families came into town to surprise her, which means I was supposed to hid them for about 48 hours prior to the party.  Also scheduled for Saturday was my class and oh yeah we bought tickets to the baseball game of the local AAA team here for that night too.  Poor planning on my part.  Friday was spent prepping the party with 8 kids at my house, and 5 adults, it was very cozy.  Bad weather forced everyone inside too.  Poor planning on Mother Nature's part.  Friday night was also Megan's preschool's spring performance.  I had no part in that planning, just happend to fall into the busiest weekend this year.  Sunday brought Sunday School Teacher Appreciation at my church, partly my fault for poor planning.  Either way, everything that could have been planned for one weekend was.  So that was just the weekend, I spent 10 days prior to the weekend prepping for this weekend.  I decided it would be a great idea to make cookies, (a new hobby I've found).  I thought it would be great to make cookies for the Sunday School Teacher Appreciation, the party, teacher gifts for Logan's teachers and the teachers at Megan's school, plus I had a friend order some cookies.  All in all when I calculated it up it was 200 cookies.

Three days spent baking, my house smelled like whipped sugar.  All in all it took 2.5 lbs if butter, 9 cups of sugar, 16 cups of flour, 1 bottle of almond extract and 5+ lbs of powdered sugar.  I made the cookies about a week before I needed them and froze them.  I knew there would be no time to make them and decorate them all in one week.  Thank goodness too, the baking was the longest part-surprisingly!

All last week was spent on various days, when I had a few hours to spare, making royal icing and decorating cookies.  This is a little what my kitchen looked like, cookies spread everywhere, drying and setting up.  Everyday it was different cookies.

Once decorated they were wrapped and boxed up in air tight containers and I crossed my fingers and hoped they'd stay fresh and yummy.  All the while still working on more cookies.

These are the 3 cookies I made.  Since this is still a fairly new hobby for me (I've only been decorating with royal icing since Easter!)  I wanted to keep them pretty simple.  Apples for teachers at schools, apples, butterflies, and flowers for Sunday School teachers, and butterflies and flowers for the party.  I did have the sense to plan it all so I could use the same cookie cutters for all the events.  The flowers were the most time consuming and gave me the most trouble.  I do love how the butterflies came out too :)

For the party they were packaged in cello bags and then attached with a bag topper.  Super simple, just a thanks stamped and some glimmer paper.  A little linen thread to finish.  Super simple!

They were displayed on the tables at the party and everyone took some home!  I even managed to get 2 orders for cookies at the party, much smaller orders than 200.  Not sure I'll commit to that many again :)  Certainly not until I get a little better and can do them quicker.  I'm glad it all worked out though.  Now I can get back to normal life....whatever that is ;)  I hope you understand now why I had to take a mini blog break last week.  I have another post scheduled for today, another party related post, check back later :)

Thanks for looking, see you soon!!!!