Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!




Hope you all have a safe and warm holiday. 
We will, it is going to be 75 degrees today!!

Witchy Leg Cake

Saw this stinking cute cake over at mycakeschool.com and had to make it. I made three of them and the kids and I planned on taking them to people in the neighborhood to "boo" or "spook" them.

I did mine a little bit differently. I used candy melts instead of fondant for the shoes. I just printed out a boot pattern placed wax paper over the paper, melted the black candy melts and piped them over the pattern. Candy melts are great because they set up pretty fast.



I also used candy melts to dip my pretzel sticks to make the legs. I made my cakes and decorated them all in one afternoon. So it was good that I used the candy melts, if I used royal icing as suggested on the cake school site I would have needed to let them dry over night.



Then I found these cute Have a sweet my pretty! free printables here.

The kids helped a little with the decorating and we delivered them out. We got caught at the first house but we had a good time.


Hope you have a very Happy Halloween!!

Fall Cookie Giveaway

So I've hit 200 likes on my Facebook page and since I am so thankful for you taking the time to look at my cookies I am going to do another giveaway. The holiday season is about to begin and you could always use some cookies to share.

Thanksgiving will soon be here and I will have some harvest/turkey day themed cookies for you to enjoy.

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post and you are entered. Please be sure that you leave an email address so that I can contact you.

Prize will consist of one dozen cookies decorated of my choice to fit the season.

Cookies will be done November 19th and will be shipped that day or delivered if winner is in my area.

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to share with me in my Sweet Hobby!!

*Winner will be chosen by the use of random.org

You have until midnight Sunday November 4th to enter. Winner will be contacted Monday the 5th.

****AND THE WINNER IS*****

CONGRATS BRITTANY!

Cookies help keeping in touch!

I friend of mine, Melissa, that I have not seen in over three years contacted me a couple of weeks ago and asked me to do some cookies for her fiance's birthday. I was so glad she called me it was so nice to catch up with her and get to visit with her again and to find out she was engaged and for hear about the wonderful guy that has entered her life.

Her fiance's favorite cartoon character is Snoopy so we decided these two designs would be great. I did not have cutters for these but since I was only do 6 each design I just made a template and cut them out by hand.

I was told he really liked them and I am so glad that my this sweet hobby of mine sparked her to call me so that we could get in contact once again!

One tough cookie... Sydnee that is, not the cookie :)

Holly cow, this week was crazy and so I am a little slow at getting this post up. This last week was Sydnee's birthday. Syd is the 5th and youngest child of my sister Kanani.

Sydnee just turned 12, and I think she is one tough cookie!!

I am not sure if she wants me to share this, but I was totally impressed with her ability to be tough. I am an esthetician, an esthetician is a skin care specialist so I deal with all things skin. Her mom drove her up to me for a few facial treatments. Most women and especially men complain during chemical peels and extractions, but Syd just winced a few times and took it like a trooper.

Sydnee is also a tough competitor which is no surprise growing up in the Wells clan, although she does not swim like 3 of her older siblings, she is totally in love with the sport of soccer. She has been playing on a team as long as I can remember, maybe I should have my son go live with them for awhile to get him interested in sports. When he plays soccer he just piddles around on the field while his teammates kick the ball. :)

Sydnee loves cinnamon rolls so I thought I would just make some to look like the delicious pastries minus the cinnamon smell!

Her favorite soccer player is Fernando Torres. He plays for Spain. I was lazy and did not want to make his face out of icing so I had him printed on a sugar sheet instead.


Her favorite colors are blue and pink, so pink and blue soccer balls it was, and her favorite number is 13!



And she is totally obsessed with the boy band One Direction. Her favorite is Harry, he is the one on the far left! Yes I printed these out as well on a sugar sheet. I was lazy!

Then I forgot to take a picture of them all together so my sister was kind enough to do that for me and send it to me. She also said that Sydnee squealed when she opened the cookies and said, "mine are the best she's ever made"!  Thanks Sydnee I will give you a big hug next time I see you!

Star Wars....Peaches....Shabbat Market

The winner from my sweet giveaway over a month ago decided she wanted to gift her prize to her newly married cousin. I thought that was sweet. Both of their birthday's were in the past couple of weeks so we waited to send them the prize.  She said the husband liked star wars and the wife liked peaches so these are the cookies I did for them.



I decided to sell some of my goodies at a Shabbat Market at a local Jewish Community Center. It did not have a great turn out but I was glad for the experience. I made these star of David cookies.



Some Halloween theme cookies which after I got there to set up, the lady in charge said "oh I forgot to tell you that you can't sell anything that is holiday themed."..... Lame.



But I think they turned out really cute anyway.



I also made some yummy chocolate cupcakes with "The best frosting I ever tasted" on them as well as triple salted caramel cupcakes but forgot to take a picture of the.



We ate the left overs over the weekend and shared them with family members and neighbors!!!

Mortensens called to Finland

I have mentioned a few times that my husband is from Finland. So it is no surprise to see Finnish themed sweets on  this blog. These cookies were made for a special couple who mean a lot to my husband.

When my husband was 16 years old he spent a year in America as a foreign exchange student. He lived with the Mortensens for a year, and he loved every minute of it. They had kids his age, they went on fun trips and he got to experience high school in America.

Glenn, the Dad, served an LDS mission in Finland for 2 years when he was 19 years old. While there, he met my husbands father and uncle, and they became fast friends. Glenn suggested to my husbands parents that they send Mikko here for an exchange program and my husband was more than eager to do so.

Glenn and Martha have always been so loving to my husband and his family, and when we go to visit my in-laws we also almost always try and visit Glenn and Martha because they now live in the same town.

So Glenn and Martha have raised six children and have many grandkids and decided to serve another mission as a couple, and of course were called back to Finland. They are serving in Turku, Finland and will be working with the young adults there. They will do an amazing job no doubt.

They had their farewell a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to make some cookies for them so here we have the Finnish flag.


And this is the crest of the city, Turku.



They will be missed by their family and friends, but we all will be blessed by their example and missionary service!

Baker, runner, canner, what can't she do = Amanda

Amanda is the third child of my oldest sister, Vanae, and she rounds out the rest of the Cumming clan posts. If you want to check out the cookies for her siblings you can click here for John, Anna, Karl and Andrew.

Amanda is another culinary queen in the family, there are many of them, but her and her sister Anna are pretty amazing women and they inherited some amazing Betty Crocker qualities from their mother. My sister can pretty much do anything. I remember once she was telling how she made cottage cheese. I was completely amazed, I mean come on who makes their own cottage cheese. She does live in a very, very small town, and she had to do a lot of things from scratch, but I am pretty sure that if it was me I would just go without the cottage cheese. :)
So with Amanda being quite the baker, I am a little ashamed of my memory of her. It was probably about 10 years ago and Amanda was coming up to SLC with a friend to see something to do with speed skating. They needed a place to stay, and of course they were welcome to stay with me and my roommate at the time. Well after they finally made it (the directions I gave were not very precise) and spent the night, the next morning I thought I would be a great hostess and make them breakfast. I decided to make pancakes and make my mother's recipe. Well when I flipped them they were so white they did not brown up. I looked at the recipe again and realized I forgot to put in the sugar. Seriously, the sugar!! Sugar helps the pancakes turn brown. I felt like a major dork in front of my niece and her friend and I felt like I let my mother down. But I just apologized, and served them anyway with a good helping of syrup. I hope she knows that even though I don't measure up to her mom as Betty, I am not so bad. :)

One of the talents, or maybe patience, is what she inherited from her mom in the talent of canning. Her and her sister can something pretty much every year. Last year they canned so many beets from their garden that they did not even have to plant them this year. I have seen this bottling jar cookie on the internet, so I decided to order me a cutter and have a go at it. I think they are cute.



Cookies to show off Amanda's ability to bake. She is so good she had people paying her to make cinnamon rolls and bread at a regular basis for a while. I wish she would bake bread for me, I stink at bread!



She has recently become addicted to running and was going to do a half marathon, but got a stress fracture and unless she wants a broken foot, she better let it heal. :)



My sister said she really didn't have a favorite food, but that she really likes chicken. I remember seeing bake at 350's fried chicken cookies so I used her idea. I am sure that Amanda eats her chicken grilled not fried. Bake at 350 said to use crushed up corn flakes but I did not have any, and did not want to buy them, so I used what I had on had which was Crunch Nut cereal and they turned out just fine.



The whole gang ready to go. I heard her daughter got a whiff of the coconut icing and said, "Yuck, I don't like coconut!", and refused to eat them. But her younger brother was not afraid of them. I hope Amanda had a wonderful day! Happy Birthday.