For my sweets

Love is in the air! Show your Valentine
you care with these tasty treats.

This is just a small sample of the love
baking in the Willert oven this
Valentine's Day!

Cookie Pictures Compiled in One Location - AT LAST!

And it's finally here - a website that has all my cookie pictures in one spot! Want to see samples of wedding cookies, birthday cookies, etc. without digging through my blog? They are categorized by theme! Just click on the "Pictures & Video" tab on the link below:

http://toocutetoeat1.shutterfly.com

Back in business!

Now taking orders for Valentine's Day and other occasions!

Baby Riley is even sweeter than my cookies!

Valentine's pictures will be posted by this weekend.

On hiatus through February for arrival of Baby Willert

Happy Holidays to all of my wonderful customers!

This season, we are expecting the best gift ever - the arrival of Riley Franklin Thomas Willert in early December. We're having a few challenges, so we're taking it easy this year; which unfortunately means no cookie baking. We hope to resume by late February.

In-town restaurants/bakeries that also do decorated sugar cookies include Kelly's Bakery and Grove St. Bakery; I'm sure they would be glad to help you with your celebrations this year.

We hope your holidays are very special!

Christy, Dave and little Riley

Gone to the zoo!

Sorry for lack of updates

Apologies for the lack of recent pictures; we spent most of our time in March taking care of my dad before he passed away in mid-April; and then celebrating the news that we're expecting a baby at the end of the year; which we found out about after dad passed. Mixed blessings.

Sweetest of Sweets

I took conversation heart cookies out and about to family and for my hubby. Red and yellow, mostly. Burnt the purple ones -oops! That's the thing about tiny cookies - they bake really quickly! They were only about 1".

This week I'm making basketballs; Star Wars; and chocolate chip. I have a couple of 50th birthday parties coming up; those are always fun!

And St. Patrick's Day - I love St. Patrick's Day! Coins, beer mugs, rainbows and of course, shamrocks!

And so it begins....

Today was the kickoff, and I'm not talking about football! I made rice krispy decorated treats, Chex mix, minty brownies, powdered sugar dusted date balls, peanut clusters and turtle pretzels. I think I might be done for the day. We make this stuff every year, and every year we say we won't make as much stuff; but you feel bad if you leave out someone's favorite item! Next weekend I'll tackle chocolate fudge, cranberry and walnut white fudge, peppermint bark, oatmeal raisin cookies, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies and of course, sugar cookies. Orders are starting to roll in; so trying to get my family's stuff done early. I found these minty snowmen I'd like to try but they sound a little time consuming. I also want to make some cinammon ornaments to hang on the tree. It's too bad that humans need so much sleep; there's so much I want to do! I don't even think one of each of all that stuff will all fit on the "Cookies for Santa" plate I have! Happy baking to you!

Happy Holidays!!!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and good luck in the New Year! Have a safe and happy holiday season with friends and Family.

More Christmas and Winter cookie pictures can be found by looking at last year's posts. Prices vary depending on cookie size/personalization.

Decorated Christmas cookie assortments are $16 per dozen. If you'd like to decorate them yourself, I'll do the baking for $8 per dozen of "naked" cookies. Order yours today by emailing TooCuteToEat1@yahoo.com. There are dozens of shapes to choose from!

First Tree

I have always had little crafty-type Christmas trees at my various apartments, with tiny decorations on them; placed up high so my cats wouldn't eat them. I've never been a big decorator, trying to keep things simple and not cluttered. I've never wanted to spend 3 days packing all that stuff back up!

I warned Dave that when we got a house, I was going to put up a big tree! It just so happens that my parents have moved into a retirement community and they haven't put up their tree in a couple years anyway, so they said we could have it. I should have paid more attention to it's assembly over the years - but that was always my sister and dad's job to assemble and light it. Luckily I was home alone, and the embarassment was not personally witnessed by anyone. :)

I realized that this tree that is now ours is going to have some major transformations. If it had a personality it might go into a little shock. Although the tree is now ours, I don't feel I have the right to lay claim to the ornaments that go with it - all of my brothers and sisters and I will go through them in the coming weeks to divvy them up. I took a couple of the ornaments that I knew I had made or given to my parents to put on our tree. And we have a couple that we've purchased for each other; and some very simple balls in multiple colors. That made a grand total of about 30 things on this tree, and I'm sure it was feeling pretty naked. It wasn't covered in 50 year old beautiful glass ornaments; funky little elves; hand crocheted snowflakes; miniature "stained glass" kid projects. And I thought, I can't have a naked tree!

So I started thinking about things that could take up a little space on this tree; fill in the gaps a bit. I remembered I had some crystals that I used to make beaded suncatchers when I sold handmade jewelry at the local Farmer's Market. They came in various sizes and colors and look pretty. I had an ornament that is a picture frame, so I put one of our wedding pictures from this summer in there. And then I realized that I have tiny Christmas cookie cutters that are too small to use for cookies, so I put hangers on those and added them to the tree. And pretty soon, the tree was starting to look a lot less naked, and a lot more like it belonged to us instead of my parents. Then I realized that this is the process of most trees and family traditions - that you add what has meaning to you and it carries on down the years. It will take awhile to build a collection of ornaments that are thoughtfully handmade or given as gifts; in 10 years there may only be 1 or 2 crystals and cookie cutters, but for this year, this is our tree; with my parent's angel looking down over it all. I didn't think I should seperate the angel from the tree; and she's still smiling, so I hope she approves.

Fall Flavors are here in time for Thanksgiving - or anytime!

Seeing spots? Thanks for taste-testing my new recipes! Please send any comments or order inquiries to TooCuteToEat1@yahoo.com. Please note that the new cookie flavors are available in your favorite shapes, and colorfully decorated!

Today, I finally took around some of the new cookies for tastings to my family, and they have been claimed a success! So off they go out into the world for comments.

The first new offering for fall is an apple pie spice sugar cookie with maple flavored cream cheese frosting. If you had a red one, this was it.

The second is a cookie with a slight rum flavoring with a nutmeg cream cheese frosting; making it taste a bit like eggnog. (imitation rum flavoring). If you had a white one with speckles, this was it.

The third is a pumkin pie spice sugar cookie with the regular cream cheese frosting. I think it would also be tasty with the maple frosting; or with a rum flavored frosting. If you had a brown one, this was it.

In the coming couple of weeks, I'll work on some new flavors for Christmas. Maybe hot chocolate cookie with white chocolate frosting; gingerbread cookie with cream cheese frosting; regular cookie with a lightly peppermint frosting.....Makes me hungry just thinking about them!

Showers, showers, and not just the weather!

The flowers to my left are for my friend Kendra's shower which is this weekend. She is having gorgeous gerbera daisies as her flowers. These are just cute. Well, cuter in person; the colors are showing kind of weird in the picture.

So the hearts below were for my cousin's wedding shower this past weekend. (The details were lighter pink, so they looked more like dresses than cheesey lingerie. Several of hers started out looking kind of tacky - I scraped off about 3 cookies before I settled on something I liked. I think I'll stick to white embellishments in the future.) Some of the dresses had to be improvised with some strap action when the last of the dough baked up with creases in it. This made the "bride" look like it had skin of an 80 year old! Hard to tell in these pics, but each one has a little pearl necklace.

Inspiration

Sometimes I get inspiration from things I see around me, or pictures I see of other cookies. Tonight I was inspired by my checkout person where I buy my baking stuff. She was so excited to learn I bake after seeing my 25 pound bags of sugar and flour and hearing about my cookies that I came home and baked a ton of different ones. So, thanks to Kim, you'll have some new cookies to see in the next couple of days. Nice to meet you, Kim!

Seasonal Suggestions

Please email me to get on my calendar for any of these upcoming events: I have many more cookie cutters in each theme, but here are a few to get you excited!

• Graduations or end-of-year class parties (Cutters: Mortarboards, diplomas, summer themes, chalkboards, apples, books)
• Assigned a treat night for your kid's summer sports team and don't want to turn on your oven - I'll turn on mine! (I can make balls, cheerleaders, jerseys, pennants, etc.)
• American pride dates: Labor Day (May 1), Armed Forces Day (May 15), Memorial Day (May 25), Flag Day (June 14). Sorry, not baking for 4th of July - getting married that day. (Flags, stars, bells, etc.)
• Mother's Day is May 10 (Several kinds of flowers, hearts, "card" - made to look like the paper kind, Alphabet messages)
• Father's Day is June 21 (Ties, grills, RV's, motorcycles, sports themes)
• First Day of Summer is June 21 (Flip flops, bikinis, sandy bare feet, flowers, suns, beverages, ice cream cones, etc.)
• And the usual birthdays, anniversaries, baby and wedding showers!

Large Cookie for Birthday

While we're waiting for my replacement cables to recharge my camera and to transfer images from my camera to my computer to arrive, I'll post a scan of a picture someone else took and post it instead! How tech savvy of me. When I get the cables, I'll post some other recent pics, including the other large cookie of a jersey-style shirt.

This cookie is a 9 x13 cookie, with an airplane cookie on top. I precut the pieces, "glued" them to the tray with icing, then iced and decorated the top. The cookie is a little over 1/4' thick. Yum!

Still here................

Hi, hi, hi.

I'm still here, really. And baking cookies; even though I haven't posted anything lately. I promise to post the pic of a large (9x13) jersey cookie I did for a ladies birthday that happens to fall on Leap Day. She's now.........6 and a quarter years old!!!

I'm going to have to ask that you look at last year's posts for St. Patrick's Day and Easter until I get some extra time. Please contact me if you need cookies at toocutetoeat1@yahoo.com. Cookie of the Month is still going strong. Please see the Aug. 8, 2008 blog post for info and mostly accurate pictures.

Latest update is that we are still working on the house (sparingly), planning our wedding for the 4th of July (feverishly) and have had some family illness thrown in the mix. (All better now).

If you know if anyone that is getting married this summer and might like to use my cookies as favors for their shower or Big Day, please let me know! Already have 2 planned and willing to take on several more (not baking July 1 - 15 or so - can you say HONEYMOON!!! Here I come, Mexico!!!!) Take care. I'll try to post more often.

Happy New Year! Not Baking Jan. 8-15 due to Big News!!

Happy New Year!

I hope that your New Year is fabulous! Mine is the busiest ever so far! We are packing to move into our new house next weekend (we close the 9th and move the 10th), and I got engaged on New Year's Day! So it's been an exciting whirlwind. If any of you would like to join us in our Wallpaper Removal Party, that will be Friday the 9th, all night long. : ) It's everywhere.

In light of that, it makes baking a bit difficult so I'm taking a hiatus while I move, sort, and find all my stuff again. : ) Feel free to email me about any cookies you need in the coming months.

Cookie of the Month cookies should be ready by Monday, Jan. 19.

Take care!

Shield your children's eyes! Naked cookies!

I know that decorating the cookies is the part that is most fun! So if you'd like me to make the dough, roll them out and bake them for you so that you and your family can get to the fun part, please let me know. "Naked Cookies" will be $8 per dozen.

Christmas Trays

Secret Santa, Holiday Parties, Thank You's..........and the start of deer hunting season

I'm always amazed by the number of uses my cookies are put to: wedding favors, thank you's, secret Santa gifts, placecards, etc. But the one that takes the cake happened last week; a friend of mine didn't want the cute little reindeer with Christmas wreath around it's neck. She wanted plain deer to give to her family for the beginning of deer hunting season. Who am I to say? Although I did want to put little cross-hairs on there or write something like, "Don't kill me, I'm Bambi!" Or add very small gunshot holes. Just for fun. : ) I didn't, though.

Christmas, Christmas time is here...............

I'm one of those people who don't like to think about Christmas until Thanksgiving is over! Except that people are already placing orders for cookies...................so I thought I'd better make some you could pick from.

All cookies, except where noted, are $16 a dozen (roughly $1.30 ea). Please try to give as much lead time as possible so I can put you on my calendar. Email questions and orders to toocutetoeat1@yahoo.com, and not my work email.

They will be done in a variety of colors; just a representation is shown. Many can also be personalized. I hope you enjoy them. If you read some of my first posts, you'll see how this tradition started; I'm so glad that you let me carry it on! Thanks!

Candy (Large is $2.00)

Various cuteness

More Various Cuteness

Santa