Happy Anniversaries

The last month or so there have been quite a few anniversaries. 

(Including my TEN year wedding anniversary, tomorrow, June 23rd!!!~Ka'ala)

Here are a few of the things we came up with...

Up first are some surprise "Happy 12th Anniversary" cake shaped cookies for our friends Paul and Aran...

Then we were asked to make some "Happy 18th Anniversary" Cookies for Tad and Terri. Being that I had just been working on the ones above I used the same idea. Tad and Terri also wanted their actual wedding date on the cookie so I used the heart cake to do that one. I thought their idea was a great personal touch!

And then finally, we made a special surprise for our friends, Charles and Cheryllani, who celebrated their TWENTY FIRST wedding anniversary!! They are an awesome couple and this milestone deserved an awesome surprise. Charles likes LOVES gingerbread anything so when we saw these Lemon Creme Filled Gingerbread Sandwich Cookies from Bake at 350, we just knew they had to be a part of the gift.

We also did some regular gingerbread too. Then we made some love trees complete with "heart" apples in the tree and their initials "carved" into the tree trunk. These too were inspired by Bridget at Bake at 350. (She's awesome!!) And then to top it all off we included 21 hearts to represent 21 years of marriage!

We put them in mason jars with pretty fabric and ribbon and cute little tags and put them all together in a basket. They were a huge hit!! Charles and Cheryllani were truly surprised :)

It's always great to share these special times with our friends, and great to see the smiles that they bring. We look forward to bringing more smiles to lots more in the future!!

It's Graduation Time!

Its's summer and that means its also graduation season! Lots of parties, celebrations and that means...lots of cookies!! These 2 parties called for lots and lots and lots of cookies...mini cookies that is!!

First up, a close friend of ours Kekai, graduated from high school and was having his 2nd of 3 parties, this one on the island of Moloka'i. His awesome mom, Jill, asked us to make some gifts for a few grads as well as thank you gifts for others she wanted to give out. Those consisted of pineapples and hibiscus...no picture of those...you guys have seen enough of those Im sure! (Although, even though there are no pics of them this time...there still may be more pics of others next time!) Jill also asked us to make some minis to go on the dessert table and this is what Anjell and I came up with. The colors of his school (and my old high school as well :) are white and blue. Also both his first and last name start with K.

 

Then there was my son :) Our little guy graduated from pre-school. He only went a month or so...but hey! It was still a graduation with a ceremony, certificates, luncheon and everything :) The weekend before the big day my family and I were on a much needed mini vacation at a nearby hotel so I wasnt going to be near my oven and able to make the dessert that I just so happened to sign up to bring. Oops! But not to worry, Anjell was so kind as to do them for me :) And she did an amazing job. I knew I wanted just some primary colored, simple shaped  minis but she suggested doing letters and numbers since its was for pre-school! I loved the idea and they came out great!! It was funny going to her house that morning to pick them up. It was as if I had made a order from our own company...lol!! 

Here's the bottom layer of the platter. I love how the triangles fit together so well!

My husband and I tried to keep them all nice and pretty but there were so many we had to just get them on the platter the best we could. Here's the full platter...

And then, here's a close up. LOVE this picture!! Thank you to my husband for taking this one!! And thank you to Anjell for making them for us!!

Polka Dotty

Lemon Poppy Seed Cookies with Royal Icing and 

Fresh Strawberry Filled Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

We got an inquiry for some "Thank You" cookies and cupcakes from a new, first time customer. She knew she wanted them to say Thank You and left the colors and designs basically up to us.

 

After seeing these adorable polka dot scrapbooking papers we were inspired to go with the polka dot theme. The purple and green went great together making these a lot of fun to do!

In addition to two dozen Thank You cookies, our new customer also wanted to order two dozen cupcakes to share as well. She went with the fresh strawberry filled cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream. YUM!

Happy Summer!!

So the kids have been BEGGING us to do some cookies for their classmates. Every time there are extras, my daughters beg to take them to school to share with teachers and friends. I had planned on doing some cute bags of minis, maybe some suns or beach balls but then we got busy. We had multiple orders for the same week and  were running out of time!

I figured that between my girls and Anjell's son there was about 75+ students and one large cookie per kid would be faster and easier than 5 or so minis per kid. (Thats like 375+ itty bitty little cookies to decorate!)

So I baked up a bunch of big sun shaped cookies with the intention of adding smiles and sunglasses and personalized labels. The night before the last day of school came along and I was exhausted so the Mr. Sun's turned into "Happy Summer! cookies with pretty yellow ribbon. I was a little disappointed cause I just knew the Mr. Suns and matching labels would be SO cute but when  I saw my kids come home and tell me that basically most friends just ripped open the package before even making it home...I felt a lot better and keeping it simple this time!! LOL!! Plus I was happy with how they ended up anyways :)

Here's a pic of all the cookies wrapped and ready for a whole lot of 1st, 2nd and 4th graders to enjoy...and a few other projects we were working on that week too....more posts on those to come soon :)

Villa Paola

My mom and I work for some Italian artist here on Maui and they often have visitors to their home where they have a beautiful cottage that is decorated with their art as well as all the charm of Hawaii and Italy. Their art is exquisite! You can meet them here at their website Twins Fine Art.

They asked me to create a welcome package for the visitors that come, something that reflects Hawaii and the Villa as well. 

Photo Courtesy of Villa Paola Maui

This plaque is hanging right on the wall as you enter the outdoor area of the cottage. As you can see it is pretty detailed and beautiful. It was pretty impossible to exactly match the design on the border so I instead used the marbling technique with similar colors in the corresponding areas.

 Being that the Twins are artist, I was a little nervous to show them the cookies but they loved them and one of them even called the cookies, "Little Works of Art" :)

So, if you plan on visiting Villa Paola any time soon, you can expect some sugarHI creations too!

Microsoft Office

Here they are! This is the other set that Rhonda asked us to create for her business students, 4 of the logos from Microsoft Office...Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access. These were a bit of a challenge but we were so happy with the results...and so was she!

Initially when we looked over the logos and were trying to figure how to create them in cookie form, I figured maybe we should just make squares and just do the inner part of the design forgoing the outside color border. But Anjell said, 'We can do it!" We sketched  and tried different thing and in the end it worked! Anjell made stencils of each logo and got to baking. She hand cut each and every cookie...no premade cookie cutters for this batch!

Then we got to work mixing colors, trying to match them best we could. Mixing colors is an interesting science and requires much patience at times. Often it takes quite some time to let the colors develop and many times they turn into something completely different than what you were going for. In the case of these colors, it took some time but thankfully, the colors developed and dried to the perfect shades we were looking for. 

Here are the finished products side by side with the actual logos we based them off of...

Pretty good huh?!  

These took an all night session, decorating till about 6 am, but it was worth it. We were able to not only push ourselves to create something great but had a very happy, satisfied customer! Once the finishing touches were applied and dried, such as the white border that really pulled them together and made them look like a complete set, we packed them up and delivered them the next morning about an hour before the first class was to start.

Rhonda loved them! In fact heres a picture she took of the cookies in her class....

This was a fun, challenging, rewarding set to make. We learned a lot and feel like it help us to grow and also gave us a little more confidence to just go for it! 

We've been busy, busy this week...with orders and projects so stayed tuned for more posts soon :) Thanks again for visiting and for all the support!!

"E" is for Eli!

This is Eli! How cute is this little man!? He is my cousin and I just adore him!

(Ok, so I haven't actually "met" him in person, cause my cousins live in the mainland...but...I adore him anyways!!!)

My husband was heading to their area with the band Ekolu (remember those cookies?), and so I baked up a batch of goodies for him to take to the family there. Of course Eli needed his own special couple of cookies :)

 

 Eli LOVED his cookies! In fact, my cousins said that his favorite word for the next few days was "cookie"! And as a bonus his Mommy sent me some adorable pictures of him enjoying them and I am going to share them with you because they are too cute to keep to myself!

Here he is checking them out...he takes his cookies very seriously!

And here he is enjoying those cookies!! "Cookie Monster"!

 

Of course he did share a few with his Mommy and Daddy and I also sent a sent for my Aunty and for my other cousin and his wife.

Everyone loved them and I am glad that I was able to use the opportunity to send some sugarHI love to my far away family :)