{woo hoo!}

I officially have my first 2 paid cookie jobs! Of course they are BOTH for this week, so I'm going to be busy baking 5 1/2 dozen cookies before Friday! I'm doing 18 pink and brown peace signs for Caroline who is turning 7 and 4 dozen superhero cookies for a little boy who is turning 5. For the superheroes, I'm doing a dozen each of Spiderman faces, Batman symbols, Superman symbols with a "5" instead of an "S", and comic book word bubbles with words like "BAM!" and "POW!"

The peace signs should be fairly straight-forward. I'm charging $1.50 per cookie. The superhero cookies are causing me to lose sleep, so I'm charging $1.75 per cookie. I really should have charged $2 because of the detail work, but oh well. :)

I'll post pictures when they are done! Wish me luck!

{fun fair cookies}

Morgan's preschool's "kick off the summer" Fun Fair was tonight. The party and the cookies were a success! I'm exhausted, though, so I'm going to post pictures of the cookies without any further commentary. Forgive me! :)

{teacher appreciation cookies}

More cookies, of course. These are mini apple cookies. I made enough to make 3 bags of 15 cookies.... one for Morgan's teacher, one for Gerard's teacher, and one for my friend's daughter's teacher. Don't forget it's Teacher Appreciation Week. Have you thanked a teacher today?

{more fundraising}

Gerard's baseball team is selling cups as their fundraiser again this year. There are 32 NFL teams, 30 MLB teams, over 90 colleges, and 5 US military designs to choose from. The cups are 18 oz, very durable, and are dishwasher safe. We bought them last year and love them. For $15 you get 4 cups of the same design. Click HERE to check out the website and let me know if you're interested in supporting his Little League!!

{the royal wedding}

Morgan and I are going to a Royal Wedding brunch tomorrow at our friends' house. Kath (the mom) is from England, and her daughter Lyla is Morgan's friend from preschool. She's having about 9 or 10 moms and their kids over to "watch a real princess get maaarrried" (according to Morgan). In honor of William and Kate's nuptials, I made cookies (of course!)

(Please excuse the lousy lighting. It's been dark, dreary and rainy here for DAYS and I couldn't get good lighting in my kitchen.)

First, the dresses..... Kate's dress is a big secret, so I made several different designs.

Of course there will be crowns...

And the Union Jack on some hearts (cute, but not perfect, and probably not worth the effort. They took me the longest to do.)....

The whole platter...

{happy earth day}

I made these for Gerard's class for Earth Day today.

{morgan's 4th birthday}

My baby turned 4 on Wednesday and we were lucky enough to celebrate with a bunch of her friends, Grandma Andrea, Grandpa Ian and Aunt Debbie. Morgan was very specific about what kind of party she wanted -- she asked to have a garden party with butterflies and flowers. We had hoped to have it outside, but Mother Nature decided not to cooperate (and even dumped a few inches of snow on us). We tried to make the inside of the house look as much like a garden as we could, complete with watering cans filled with flowers and butterflies floating from the lights.

She even picked out her own dress.... We were walking through the store MONTHS ago and she said "Look! I want THAT garden dress for my garden birthday party." It's been KILLING her that she hasn't been able to wear it until now (although I did let her wear it around the house a few times.)

(Please ignore the knocked-over patio chairs. I told you Mother Nature didn't cooperate, and it was REALLY windy!)

The favors were little terra cotta pots, tied with a coordinating ribbon, and filled with a home-made flower sugar cookie, a packet of seeds, a butterfly plant pick, a butterfly sticky note pad and a garden-themed pencil. Each girl also got a flower barrette that I made and a lipgloss and each boy got a little frog and a magnifying lens. I think they turned out really cute, and helped add to the decor. :)

Morgan had 8 friends over, plus her and Gerard, so we had 10 kids for the party. They were all really well behaved and I think they all had fun. (I'm not going to include any pictures of them since I'm not sure if their parents would approve.) We played a few games. First the kids decorated butterflies and then played pin-the-butterfly-on-the-flower with them. Next was a bug scavenger hunt. Aunt Debbie hid 100 little bugs and the kids had to find them and put them in their butterfly nets. I certainly hope they found all 100 bugs, because the last thing I'd want is for a potential home-buyer to be looking at the house and see a giant cockroach! We also had a bean-bag toss into flowerpots (with flower and butterfly beanbags of course). We never got to Flower BINGO because the kids just wanted to play with toys and some of Morgan's new presents.

I have been trying my hand at some more advanced cookie-making, and in addition to the flower cookies for the favors, I made butterfly cookies and butterfly cupcakes. They were a real hit!

Of course everything had to be pink, including the lemonade and the straws.

Happy birthday, beautiful Morgan! I hope your garden party was exactly how you had imagined it!