Hi, everyone! It's great to be back to the Saturday Spotlight routine after a brief breather for the Thanksgiving holiday. (Though, admittedly, it hardly feels like I had any vacation at all after being back to work for a week . . . it's been a zany one, what with complicated site updates and all!) From the looks of this week's hot list, I can see that, while I was away, everyone...
My past November tutorials have always been about 3-D Christmas trees. To refresh your memory, below is a small gallery of those projects and their variations, which include...
I'm a collector (my husband might say "hoarder"!) of many things, but one of my favorite collections is my vintage holiday cards. Around this time each year, I repurpose them into...
Deck the (Cookie Connection) halls with boughs of holly! Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la! 'Tis the season to be jolly! Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la! I just love-love-love-love all the...
Growing up, I was fortunate enough to celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. At our house, Hanukkah was always a quiet affair with an understated elegance. As a child, I would have called it “fancy”. Maybe it was the colors, the deep blues and shiny metallics, that made it feel so sophisticated. Maybe it was...
Many thanks to Gingerland, aka Berni Solti, for once again so generously donating content to the site. She's been a prolific contributor of cookie art for our site banner and backdrop, but, this time, she's gone all out with this adorable guest tutorial! Enjoy! Much gratitude to Berni!...
Oh my! We went from seasonal ambiguity to full-on Christmas cheer all in one week! Half of the honored cookies on this week's hot list are clearly working double time to get us all in the Christmas spirit, and, I must say, they are succeeding! The other half is...
What could be more basic than water? On one level, water is so essential that no life would exist without it. And yet, on the other hand, few things are as complex as water. It can be...
Just as we’re supposed to be bundling up in thick sweaters and downy coats, I’ve experienced the run of all possible seasons and weather this week – and not just in my travels from Washington, DC to Stonington, Maine, but in my journey through the site in preparing this Spotlight! Naturally...
This month's tutorial is all about royal icing transfers, which are decorations piped on parchment paper or acetate and then attached to cookies once they are dry . . . but we are not using cookies! Although I like the idea of decorated cookies as place cards, I like less the idea of...
My mom is a professional dressmaker. As a child, I thought her office was a wondrous and tempting place, a treasure trove of dress-up opportunities. My mom enforced a strict no-touching rule, of course. While the garments and her tools were off limits, I was...
Boo! Did I scare you? Maybe a little bit? . . . No? Well, I could tell by the entries we received this time around that you guys were not scared off by this admittedly difficult and technical challenge, but bravely tackled it head on. In fact...
Thank you all for participating in the most recent questionnaire in my Sugar Dot Surveys series. In this one, I asked you questions about taking payment for cookie orders. I was curious about how you go about getting paid and why you do it that way...
Thanks for you patience, all! It was a crazy-busy weekend for me teaching at the legendary Wilton School in Darien, Illinois. Click through for a view of the calm before the storm...
Hi, everyone! I've got some BIG and EXCITING news. First, some background . . . If you didn't already know, shortly after the conclusion of this year's Julia M. Usher’s Cookie Art Competition™, my host show in St. Louis closed its doors, just as the Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show did the year before. So...
