Easter has been one of my favorite holidays since I was a child. I remember how my sisters and I would spend hours drawing designs on cooked eggs with crayons before carefully dipping them into little cups of dye. Once we had amassed dozens of brightly colored eggs, the treasure hunts would begin. We’d...
I’ve always had a love of blue and white china. The patterns are classically beautiful but with a striking contrast that makes me want to look closer. Recently, I came across this blue and white dinner plate. With its large-scale flowers, it felt like a...
Do you have some extra time on your hands? Are you a perfectionist with the patience of a saint? Do your friends marvel at your love of tedious projects?...
My neighbors are expecting their first baby any day now. A little girl! With comically unfortunate timing, our street is being closed for two weeks for repaving. We’ve all had to park our cars a few blocks away on another street or risk being...
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...
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...
Despite my love of Halloween cookies, I absolutely hate horror movies. Jump scares send me flying. Zombies give me nightmares. The screaming, the dark, the blood . . . no, thank you. This is all just to say that I can be...
My husband’s birthday is coming up, and I know exactly what he wants. He’d love for us to take scuba diving lessons together. I can understand the appeal. Who doesn’t enjoy underwater landscapes and interesting sea creatures? There’s only one problem...
Before my husband and I were married - before we had kids and a home and responsibilities - time didn’t feel so precious. We’d regularly spend a day just driving with no real destination in mind. We’d cruise along...
The summer of 1989 was one of my favorites. I spent my days with friends by the pool and my nights camping in the backyard. We watched scary movies, giggled about boys, and crimped each others’ hair. And all the while...
When it comes to creating cookie designs, I find Father’s Day to be one of the most difficult holidays. Every year I look for inspiration, but I seem to find only a handful of ideas, none of which apply to the man I’m trying to celebrate...
Following a particularly wet winter, California is officially drought-free! I think any native Californian meets this news with both gratitude as well as a little skepticism. I’ve lived here most of my life, and I can’t remember a time when we weren’t experiencing some degree of drought...
The internet is such a treasure trove of cookie design material. Across all of the different social media platforms, we have an unending stream of art right at our fingertips. Years ago, while scrolling through some images on Pinterest, I came across these beauties...
I love to take inspiration for my cookie designs from nature. There’s an imperfect quality to organic objects that I find very forgiving; things don’t have to be perfectly straight, smooth, or symmetrical. So I try to...
When I used to sell my cookies, practicality was my worst enemy. It was an infuriating little voice in my head whispering sad truths: “too fragile”, “ too big”, “too sticky”. Every design had to live in a little bag without risk of breaking, smudging, or becoming stale on its path to the customer’s event. Now...
