Welcome baby!

Agh!!! I can FINALLY write about this!!! I have been barely holding myself back from blogging about this for weeks. Weeks I said! Today is my friend Andi's baby shower and while I would love to be there, small problem. It's in Vegas. I'm in Honolulu. So since I couldn't be there, I sent cookies. The only problem was that I didn't want her to know what I was doing. Now, I love surprises...when I'm the one doing them. Unless you plan on showing up with a cashier's check for a gazillion dollars, please don't surprise me. I had to avoid her for a few weeks lest I slip and either hint as to what I was doing or just come right out and say it.

You may ask yourself how I managed to do this and the answer is easy. I managed to use my cyberskills *insert eye roll here* to contact the person hosting the shower (thank goodness for Facebook!) and asked about sending cookies for the party. I think it helped that Andi asked me to do bring some cookies to Vegas last summer to celebrate the hostess' baby. Once we agreed that I would be able to participate, in my typical fashion, I'm steamrolled my way into a design and didn't ask for any one's opinion.

I had seen the cutest baby cookies on Amanda's blog at I Am Baker and I had been waiting for an occasion to make them. Since Andi doesn't know what she is having, I thought this was the perfect opportunity. The invite was polka dots and the decor was blocks so I decided to combine all 3. I didn't have a block cookie cutter but since it was less than 3 dozen cookies and went ahead and hand-cut them. It's a little crazy but if you think about, the cookie was straight lines so it was easy to do.

I'm so glad I took a picture of the cookie with straight lines!

Once baked I added lines to notate the sides of the block and flooded the cookie. Once that was dry, it was really time to have fun. I didn't do any a lot of wet-on-wet with these cookies but I did incorporate lay-ons, my poor un-used food color pens, and disco dust. Somehow my orange dust seemed larger than the blue and green so I didn't care for that much. I am making some dragonflies this weekend though so the blue and green dusts are getting another workout.

Half of the babies were girls so I used teeny tiny hearts to make bows. I used a pair of white hearts for one cookie...it turned out too much like Pebbles from the Flintstones for me.

Now, I dislike tying ribbon on bags but since I wanted to send these 100% complete, I found polka dot ribbon started to cut them, and wouldn't you know it, I didn't have enough ribbon! These guys had to go out the following day in order to make it to Vegas in time but I REALLY didn't want to go back out. I ended up kicking my husband off of the computer (it's okay, he was only playing Bejeweled) and trying to figure out how to make a cute tag that would tie in.

Now, here's where those cyber-stalker skills came in handy again. Andi had painted a mural onto her nursery wall and posted a pic of it. I copied the pic, pasted into Word and added a text box. Tags complete! Look at me - I can work in IT. Not. I'm happy to say that each cookie arrived safely thanks to self-sticking bubble wrap. The next time I ship cookies I am definitely using that again!

Yes, that's one of those school paper cutters. Doesn't every home have one?

Congratulations Andi & Doug! I hope you had a fantastic shower! And if you happen to see this on FB before you find out the cookies are from me, you never saw this!

Amanda from I Am Baker, thanks for sharing your great idea!