{Sugar Bee} Vampirina Sugar Cookies for Alivia's 4th Birthday

This past weekend a sweet and beautiful, little girl named, Alivia, turned 4! Her mama, who happens to be my niece, planned a special day filled with the birthday girl's favorite character, Vampirina. If you aren't familiar with Vampirina, it is one of the newest cartoons on the Disney Junior channel. She is a little girl vampire who moves from Transylvania to Pennsylvania with her mom and dad, and they open a Bed and Breakfast. Vee (Vampirina) is the new kid in town and must face the trials, tribulations, and joys of fitting in with her very human classmates. It is a super adorable show and little girls are going batty over it!

However, because this cartoon is fairly new, there is a lack of Vampirina party decorations in the stores, thus, I was asked to make cookies that would allow her to bring the theme of the party into the decor. I must admit that I am not a cookie decorator that prides herself on character cookies, they are on the difficult side and can be very time consuming, but of course for Alivia, I was up for the challenge!

What I came up with was the perfect combination of characters and spooktacular patterns! I decided that I would try my hand at Vampirina and her friend, Demi. Instead of doing characters with their entire bodies, I placed Vampirina's face on a plaque cookie with a cute gray bat pattern. Demi's face was placed on a balloon, also with a bat pattern, but in a pretty purple. I wanted to include a festive birthday cake, so I created a purple cake with black drip frosting topped with some red and pink sprinkles. On the side of the cake I added a spider web pattern and a cute bat to represent Vampirina in bat form. Lastly, I like to incorporate some personalization so I made bat cookies and piped Alivia's name on them. I also created number 4 cookies with a spiderweb pattern and a purple bat since that is age she was turning. 

Overall, I think I may be "batty" for this set! They are just frightfully fun and I hope Alivia had boo-tiful day filled with spooktacular fun!

Happy 4th birthday, Alivia!

{Sugar Bee} Cute Cacti Sugar Cookies

If it isn't obvious that these cookies are for a gender reveal party, let me explain! When I was approached to do cookies for a cacti themed party that would reveal the gender of a baby due in 2019, I was very excited because I LOVE cacti cookies! I was instructed that the boy cactus needed to have a mustache and the girl cactus needed to have a bow. But of course, I wanted to mix it up a bit and add a little bit of variety. And I must admit, I am totally "stuck on" these cacti sugar cookies!

As you can see, there are 5 different cacti cookies. The girl cacti are potted and are wearing either a bow or flower...and in pink, of course! The boys are saguaro cacti, one is a chubby saguaro the other is a traditional saguaro, and they both have mustaches and are wearing a bow tie....in blue! The last cookie is to break up the cookies and are to represent both genders, hence the blue and pink rosettes. Because I love to add a little bit of glitz, I added a subtle pattern to each cookie using gold and a green metallic sheen. I think it was the perfect touch!

Now to find out the gender....will it be a he or a she?!

Congratulations to the parents-to-be!

{Party Bee} Eat, Drink, and Carve this Halloween!

It is my favorite holiday of the year...it is Halloween! This time of year is just so much fun. The weather starts cooling down, the Fall decorations fill the stores, and I get to go crazy with creating a fun and festive theme for Halloween. This year I decided to go pretty traditional with orange, black, and white and fill my tables with Jack O' lanterns!

A couple of years ago I created a printable collection with a Jack O'lantern theme, but with a twist...this collection is for a pumpkin carving party. So, though the party we planned wasn't only for pumpkin carving, it was certainly an activity that our guests could option to do....and it was highly encouraged!

My dessert table was complete with cute little sugar cookies and chocolate covered Oreos, all created with pumpkins and jack o' lanterns in mind. Even the ghosts had little jack o' lanterns!

What was great was that I got to use decorations that I already had in my Halloween decor bin. My ceramic Jack O'lantern (that I have had for several years) was the perfect centerpiece for my table! Then when I was at Target and Walmart, I found mini ones that I thought looked like they belonged right beside my large one!

Another fun and easy decoration I found, were these super cute paper pinwheels! I got them off of Amazon and they came with a dozen pinwheels of different sizes and patterns with a orange, black, and white color scheme. Best part about these...they are reusable and close for small and easy storage!

Every year, I always have water bottles with coordinating bottle wraps. It is just so easy and is an inexpensive way to keep the theme going. Plus, everyone needs to drink water anyway!

I always tell my clients to always check the dollar store and the dollar section of Target for decorations and party favors! This year Dollar General had the cutest felt pumpkin placemats. They were such a cute and colorful element to my table...and a great party favor for the kids! I also found cute lidded glasses with straws that went perfectly with my theme....and the kids could use them that night or take them home and use them!

Lemonade is such an easy drink to serve for parties. If you have a lemon tree like I do, it really is super cost effective, and let me just say....fresh squeezed lemonade is the BEST! To make it a little more interesting, I added the option of flavoring the lemonade with "pumpkin potion" (aka Raspberry syrup) or "jack o' lantern juice" (aka peach syrup). It is something fun to do and spices up traditional lemonade. If you wanted to create something for adults (which I always like to do), offer a jigger of vodka to turn it into an adult only beverage! Just keep the jiggers away from the littles.

My sweet pumpkin wanted to wear an outfit that just so happened to fit my theme....so here she is posing with her favorite sugar cookie, a jack o' lantern, of course!

Here is to a safe, fun, and Happy Halloween filled with family, friends, yummy treats...and of course Jack O' lanterns!

{Sugar Bee} Jack O'lantern Chocolate Covered Oreos

"There is magic in the night when pumpkins glow by moonlight"!

One more day until Halloween! Wishing you all a bewitching night filled with fun and ghoulish goodies! 

{Sugar Bee} Boo-tiful Halloween Sugar Cookies

My customers will be scaring up some fun this Halloween with these boo-tiful sugar cookies! I don't know a better way to celebrate the holiday than with some yummy and festive sweet treats!

There is definitely no tricks with these spooktacular treats! 

What's brewing in your kitchen for Halloween this year?!

{Sugar Bee} Hudson's Blazin' Sweet Firefighter Sugar Cookies

Sound the alarm and get fired up, because a little firefighter celebrated his 4th birthday with these smokin' sugar cookies!

This is year for Hudson's birthday, he had a firefighter themed birthday party and his mama asked me to create some cute and delicious treats to accompany the rest of her fun and festive decor. Well of course I was excited because it allowed me to pull out some of my cookie cutters that I have been dying to use!

The color palette that I used mainly consisted of the typical colors for this theme, red! But I wanted to include other colors to break up the red and add an accent color. So I decided to use gray as my other main color, but also include white, black, and finally use yellow as my accent color.

When I was coming up with my designs, I thought we of course needed to have a Fire Helmet and Fire Truck, but I wanted to add a couple cookies for personalization. After brainstorming a bit more, what I came up with with was a Fire Cross with Hudson's initial and a number 4 to highlight the age he is turning! I must admit, the number 4 probably is my favorite cookie because I was able to create those fun and colorful flames! But I also didn't want to forget about the dalmatian that is often associated with firefighters and fire stations, so I created a dalmatian paw to the set. Finally, I wanted to use the yellow a bit more to make the color really pop in the collection, so I decided to create a fire hydrant on a plaque shape cookie that had a brick pattern to represent a building.

All together these 6 designs made such a cute and cohesive set...they were definitely ready to go to the station to sweeten Hudson's birthday party!

I had a blazin' good time making these cookies and I hope the birthday boy had an equally good time eating them!

Happy 4th Birthday, Hudson!

{Sugar Bee} Transportation themed Cookies for Avery's 2nd Birthday

Start your engines and shift into gear because a little boy named Avery is turning 2! For his second birthday, Avery's mom wanted some cookies to go along with his party theme, "Things that Go"! Well of course that is a fun theme with SO many options....having to narrow it down to just a few vehicles was a bit of a challenge. However, Avery had some favorites that his mom wanted to see incorporated into the set, so that helped me as I designed the cookies.

I thought it would be fun to have the option of splitting them into mini sets....things that go on land, and things that go in the air and on water. But keeping them cohesive would be my goal. So each set had a color scheme, but one color would make their way through most of the designs...yellow!

The things that go on land set was comprised of a tractor, dump truck and a number two that looked like a dirt/mud road with tire tracks. I kept to the color scheme of green, yellow, brown, and black. For the things that go in air/on water, I created a sailboat, hot air balloon, and a number two that had clouds and a helicopter and airplane. The main colors I used for that min set were light blue, dark, blue, red, and white....but I still managed to accent a couple of the cookies with yellow to unify the entire collection.

Overall, I was so happy with how they turned out and I hope the birthday boy enjoys them as well!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Avery! Hope you had a "wheelie" good time! :)