Hi, all! As I'm sure most of our site veterans are well aware, @Laegwen, known in real life as Leoni Eckart, has been an official Cookie Connection contributor for just over a year! She made her inaugural blog post on May 12, 2016, and has been posting her inspired cookie tutorials under the Get Inspired with Laegwen section of our blog ever since. Lucky us!
Words really can't express how appreciative I am of Leoni's consistently high quality work and commitment to educating all of us on the site. But even so, it's hard to hug her from across the world, so words in this case must suffice! That said, I thank Leoni from the bottom of my heart! Leoni, this site wouldn't be half of what it is without you and your contributions.
To recognize Leoni's hard work and to mark her one-year anniversary on the site, I'll soon be sending her a crystal commemorative trophy that looks a lot like the one below, just engraved with her own name, of course! Leoni can also expect my undying gratitude for as long as she's willing to hang out here on Cookie Connection (which I hope is forever)! 
Please join me in extending a HUGE thank you and congratulations to Leoni for reaching this milestone on the site.
To learn more about Leoni, please check out her bio, below, and her Get Inspired with Laegwen series here. And, please stay tuned. She's got another great cookie tutorial in our moderation queue, on the verge of being posted in the next week or so!
Leoni Eckart, aka Laegwen, contributes every other month to Get Inspired with Laegwen, a series of cookie decorating tutorials that follow her personal experiments with gumpaste, royal icing, and other cookie decorating materials and methods. Leoni started her baking career way before her own memory sets in, decorating Christmas cookies with her mother (at least that's what she's been told!), and has never entirely stopped puttering around in the kitchen since. Her first decorated cookies as an adult were her own wedding favors, and then, over Christmas 2014, her cookie fever went into overdrive! As of present, it shows no signs of cooling off. To read all of Leoni's past Get Inspired tutorials, click here. Photo credit: Leoni Eckart.
