My *Sweet* Family Tree

...or The 3rd ALFBE (Annual Lamb Family Birthday Extravaganzzza)...or Christmas in July, because that's what it looked like.

So, if you've been around long enough, you can remember that the inaugural year of the ALFBE was disturbed by whooping cough (You can read about it here...at the bottom of the post).  The following year, the party went on as planned with the theme of Star Wars, inspired by the Williams-Sonoma cookie cutters I found.  It took me some time to come up with the theme for this year's soiree (yes, I'm seeing how many different words I can use for party).  As the official cake and cookie baker and decorator of the ALFBE (I just made it official, just now. It's in print.), I get the pleasure of determining the theme for the get-together.  I have that power...and I kinda like it (insert ominous laugh here).  I take suggestions, but this year, I more or less kept it a secret.  Even when my sis-in-law had my sweet little niece call me on the phone to pry it out of me, I told her it was a surprise! 

So, the theme this year was family.  I know, it's kind of a weird theme for a birthday(s) party, but go with me on this.  I'm not gonna go into all the details, but just know that my family means a lot to me...a lot.  And I love them more than words on a cake can say. 

So, without further ado...our family tree.  Cake style.

This is what it looked like before it made the 3.5 hour trip.  Thankfully, it still looked like this after the 3.5 hour trip.

The presentation. 

The part where I actually made it a family tree!

Fuzzy pic.  Whoops.

And then there were the personalized cookies for each of my 15 family members.  (My last name is Lamb...in case you didn't catch that.)

That's a magic wand on my dad's lamb cookie.  (He's a magician...I'll leave it at that.)

Mom, obviously, is a musician.

My sister's flock.  (Though technically they're not Lambs.)

My brother's flock.

Me and my flo...well, me. ;-)

My little sis and her husband.  (The symbol is for the Appalachian Trail.  They're avid hikers.  And cyclers.  And runners.  And, well, pretty much anything outside.)

My sweet nieces (all but the littlest) patiently waiting for the cake cutting.

There's the littlest!

The damage.

The fam! (Minus Betsy and Kyle...who were in a TRIATHALON!!)

All thanks to these two...

All in all, a fabulous ALFBE! 

I've got some exciting things coming up, I'll keep you posted.

As always, think cookies.

~B~

More Bake Love

I would feel guilty if I didn't mention that the bakelove t-shirt that I mentioned in my previous post is brought to you by Bakerella.  A genius.  She has made cake pops famous with her baking blog.  And now even has her own book.  Her site is fun to look at.  If you're not familiar with her, you should take a gander. 

Another one of favorite blogs to look at is i am baker.  I'm am always blown away at her creations.  Usually, when I see her pictures, I say - out loud - "Ri-diii-cu-lousss".  It's ridiculous that amount of talent and creativity this woman has, AND she has a family!  (She has another blog, too, called i am mommy, but the baking one appeals to me more. ha.)  It was on her blog that I saw the idea for this cake I made for a friend of the family for Valentine's Day.  (iambaker did it better, but I still think mine is pretty cute.)

iambaker did the roses all over.  It was soo pretty.  You should go look at it (click the "roses all over").

Well, now that Valentine's Day is over, I'm on to St. Patrick's Day...with some orders in between.  So, as always, I'm happy baking.

Kicking The Summer Off - Cookie-style!

I had quite a variety of cookies last week.  Between graduation, end of school, and ladies night, I added a few more designs to me repertoire.  Here's my week at a glance.

These were for Cade's classmates and teachers.  They got some Sweet B's for Valentine's Day, too!

Katie was graduating from kindergarten and her good friend Jennifer (who also happens to be Cade's mom), wanted to give her some cookies for the special occasion!

 The neighborhood ladies have a Bunco group and my cookies were featured at that latest meeting.  I hope those ladies had fun!

Of course, Carlee Anne had to take end-of-the-year cookies to her 2 wonderful teachers, Mrs. Skelton and Mrs. Adam and her bus driver, Mrs. Painter.  She had a wonderful year and I hope they have a wonderful summer!

I finally tried the baby onesie cutter.  I think they turned out so cute!  Bonnie said she loved them because they looked like little, fat-baby onesies.  And you know we love a chunk-chunk!

I did a few cookies for brand new Baby Sutton.  These were inspired by Sutton's new room - down to the elephant.

Last but not least, Maggie (the family babysitter), graduated from high school on Sunday.  She is now an alumnus from Aquinas High, home of the fighting Irish.  I made this cake for her and her cousin to share with the rest of the family.

And I made these cookies just for Maggie!  She'll be headed to Athens in the fall - she's such a smart girl.

While I was decorating these, I was doing a little bit of the Georgia cheer -

My 1 year-old niece was catching on to the chant real quick.  I knew she was a keeper!

I won't be quite so busy with cookies this week, thankfully.  Bonnie and Stevo are going to Costa Rica, which means I have both the girls by myself for 6 days! 

So, happy aunt-ing to me!

Behind Every Cookie, There's a Story

Which is exactly why I blog!  And I have plenty of stories from this week, as I was super busy!

Order #1 - Cookies for Katy

I worked with Katy at Starbucks in Columbus.  She just recently has been promoted to Shift Supervisor (Yay!) and her mom, in Atlanta, wanted to send her some congratulations cookies - in the shape of coffee cups of course.  Well, the pictures I took of her cute coffee cups got lost (I knew this would happen eventually).  You see, I don't have my own computer, and since pictures take up so much space, I put all of them on an external hard drive.  And I'm sure I thought I put them on my hard drive and then deleted them off my camera, because when I went to look for them, they were nowhere to be found!!  I'm soooo sad!!  I do have a few shots from my camera phone that I'll show you.  So sorry for the poor quality pictures!! 

Order #2 - Cristie's Cake

Cristie was throwing a party for her husband's new command (or company or something like that.  I'm not good at keeping up with what the Army calls things).  Cristie just needed a big cake with the company's shield on it.  She gave me a copy of what the shield looks like, which is what the paper on the right is.  She seemed pleased with the outcome!

Order #3 - Mom's Day!

So, the Mother's Day cookies that were pictured on my Mother's Day post weren't actually for my mother.  Kristen, who works with my sister and is an avid Sweet B fan, ordered 2 boxes of them - one for her mom and one for her mom-in-law.  Bonnie took them to work with her on Friday morning to deliver to Kristen.  So they sat on Kristen's desk, taunting her all day long.  She couldn't resist, she gave in to her addiction and ate one of her mom's cookies.  So, her mom got 19 cookies instead of 20 for Mother's Day.  But I'm sure she enjoyed them just the same!

 (The second Mom's Day order was pictured on my post yesterday.)

Order #4 - Teacher Appreciation

It was teacher appreciation week last week at Blue Ridge Elementary, where my niece attends and to finish out the week, they had a luncheon for the teachers.  Bonnie signed up to bring a dessert and asked if Sweet B could make one for her.  She loved the cake I did for our neighbor Kari and wanted the same design. She loves it when the message is on the side of the cake (She says it’s the Sweet B’s Difference!). And for that matter, I agree!

"We *heart* BRE teachers!"

Orders #5 & 6 - Daniel and Lauren's Engagement Party Cake and Cookies

These were 2 separate orders for the same party.  My sister wanted to take the happy couple some congrats cookies and the people throwing the party called and asked me to make the cake.  I made the cake to look like the couple's wedding invitation (per Bonnie's suggestion).  Which, while doing it, I wasn't sure it was the best idea - that's a lotta dots!  My arm got a little tired, but I did survive.
The invite - 

The cake -

Bonnie wanted the cookies in the black and white, which I love for wedding/engagement cookies.

I hope Daniel and Lauren enjoyed their sweets from Sweet B! 

Order #7 - Wayne's birthday Cake

My brother-in-law's friend, Wayne is an avid Alabama fan and so when his wife called asking me to make his birthday cake for the party we were attending, it was easy to pick a theme!  The funny story here is that, I was in charge of bringing the cake out at the party.  I went inside to take the cake out of the box, and I knocked off a corner of the icing.  Yup, I messed it up.  And of course, I hadn't got any pictures of the cake yet.  So, here's the cake, dented corner and all.

(Have I mentioned that I'm a klutz in real life?!)

Order #8 - Abby's Birthday Cookies

Abby is a member of the Sweet B’s fan club at Bonnie's work. A few of the girls give each other Sweet B cookies for each other's birthdays.  It's kinda funny.  So, today was Abby's birthday and of course, Kristen and Jessica got her some Sweet B's cookies!  Happy birthday, Abby!

 

Whew!  That was a busy week.  I would venture to say that I worked harder doing 8 different orders than the week before when I did 600 cookies for one order! 

Well, I don't have a lot of orders this week, so I'm hoping to do a bit of experimenting, especially since I just ordered some new cookie cutters.  I'm so excited!

So, happy experimental baking to me!

Peace, Love and Cookies

So, my baking-frenzy week started off by mailing cookies to a friend of mine who had a baby a month ago.  I'm just now getting the "Wow, you had a baby" cookies to her - sorry for the lateness.  I got to use one of my new, beautiful, copper cookie cutters (try saying those 3 words 5 times fast).  It's a 3"x5" rectangle.  (That's one big cookie!)  I call it my message cookie because that's what it's for - to send messages, cookie-style.  I love it. 

See - it's big enough to write "congratulations" on it.  That's a big word to put on a cookie.  Trust me, I didn't know if I was going to get all the letters on there.  But I succeeded! 

My next order was for Stanton.  No, this isn't a recycled picture from Valentine's.  I did hearts again.  I didn't swear them off after making hundreds of them.  But this time the heart was accompanied by peace and happiness.  Stanton's mom received a Bits of Love Valentine at her supper club. She said they were "SO good" and wanted to give them as favors for Stanton's birthday party. She wanted peace signs, and I suggested doing the whole "Peace, Love and Happiness."  She also wanted me to do a 12" cake for her.  I had the perfect design in my head to match the flower-child theme.  I made her cake, stacked it, crumb-coated it (a thin layer of icing to set all the crumbs), and iced it a beautiful color of green.  I got that sucker sooo smooth.  I was so proud of how smooth it looked.  The next morning, I went to start decorating it.  I got the ruler out to figure out how big I needed to make the flowers.  I laid the ruler down gently on the top of the cake.  The cake measured 11".  Wait a second.  That means, without the icing, it's a 10" cake.  *@#%!&$*#^*  (Don't worry, Mom.  I didn't really say any bad words.)  I asked myself - whaddya mean I made a 10" cake?!  My brain started spinning.  I didn't know if I had enough time to re-make the whole thing - there are parts of the baking process you can't rush through.  Not to mention I had already made this one so pretty.  I was stressin'.  But then, the rational juice started flowing through the brain (I'm not sure where it came from, but I was glad to feel it!)  I decided that it was much more reasonable for me to supplement with matching cupcakes than to make a whole other cake.  I emailed Stanton's mom, apologizing for being a space cadet, and she graciously accepted my alternative.  I still feel like such a ditz.  Anyways, the cake turned out beautifully.  I hope Stanton had a groovy party!

The next order I did was for one of my sister's co-workers.  She was going to an out-of-town wedding and they were having a small shower/bachelorette party for the bride.  So, we did an elegant 6" cake and fun cookies to go with it.

 

It was my first time trying out the coffee cup cutter (another tongue twister).  Of course - I love it. 

Then, for my last order of the week, a simple birthday cake.  It was simple because I barely got 24 hours notice. Lucky for Polly, I wasn't running behind on any of my other orders so she got to enjoy a cake from Sweet B's! 

So, as you can see, I was super busy last week.  The good news - this week looks just as busy!! 

Let's get baking!