Cookie Con 2014

 

Dear Readers, I have just come back from the most wonderful convention -- Cookie Con. 2014, held in Salt Lake City, Utah!  This is an annual gathering of cookie decorators, or should I say artists.  I must say that it was the most fun convention  I have ever attended.  My fellow cookie attendees were some of the nicest, fun-loving, and friendliest people I have ever met.  I guess people who love sugar and cookies are just the happiest and most fun people.  The wonderful cookies above, my favorites, were decorated by two women with a company called Sugar Bliss, located in Salt Lake, Utah.

 

About 450 women and two men came to the conference from 44 states and about 14 foreign countries.  A highlight of the conference was the Sugar Show where conference attendees brought their cookies to be judged in 4 categories :  Spring, Anything Goes, My Hometown, and Once Upon a Time.  When I walked into the Sugar Show and saw the amazing work of the cookie artists, I thought, "I am sure glad I didn't bring any of my work!"  My fellow attendees are amazing cookie artists!

A Sampling From the Sugar Show
 

This cookie won an instructor's award, and it was made by one of the two male attendees.

 

Beauty and the Beast never looked so enchanting!

The 3-D dragon was amazing.

The detail on this carousel was awe-inspiring!

 



 

In the category of My Home Town, these cookies by Sugar Bliss captured my heart.

 





 

There were cookies for all occasions.

 





 

The details on these playing cards was a sight to behold.  They were a favorite with the attendees.



These cookies looked like they belong on the wall.

 



 

These are as sweet as can be!

I loved the stained glass look on this Arizona cookie.



As attendees we were asked to judge these cookies in the four separate categories , and on the last day of the convention the  top three in each category were given cash awards.

 

I attended the convention with my sister Jacqueline (right) and her daughter Jessica (left).  They are posing with the cookie personality Arty McGoo who gave a fun and entertaining keynote address which included extremely clever video spoofs of popular movies and shows on their
"Cookie Vision" channel.   

 

 

We attended cookie decorating technique classes, which were informative and fun. 

 

This convention speaker gave an extremely interesting presentation about the development of her cookie store, and mail order business  in Wilton, Connecticut, The Painted Cookie.   I am never going to open a cookie store, but if you are, she had all the experience.
 

 

On the last day we were finally able to dive into cookie decorating.  We were given cookies iced with royal icing and non-iced cookies and stations were set up in a ballroom stocked with cookie decorating supplies.  We were also given a "mystery-shaped" cookie and were asked to decorate it and enter it into a judged competition.

  

 

Once again these talented attendees did not disappoint!  The following were a few of the entries.

 

 

Here are my cookies!  I enjoyed the day of decorating.  I am only just a beginning decorator, but I was able to try some different techniques such as stenciling, embossed cookies with fondant, luster dusting, wafer papering water coloring, and painting Springerle.

 

 

The convention attendees were super friendly and very helpful.  These two cookies were done by my fellow attendees.  I stopped, admired their cookies, and asked them about their techniques.  They were happy and willing to share -- no trade secret techniques here!

 

 

The organizers of this conference knew how to make a fun convention  for everyone.  Each of us received a fun "swag bag" filled with cookie decorating paraphernalia.

 

 

Door prizes were given out during the conference sessions.  I won a huge top of fondant and a traffic director (gag gift).  My niece Jessica won an air brush with a raffle ticket!  A Copy Cake and two Kitchen-Aids were also given out during the convention!

 

My Cookie Con goodie bag and winnings.

 

 

 

In my former life, I was a research analyst for a non-profit organization in California which met the lobbying and training needs of city officials.  A part of my job was to put together meetings for fire officials, and to assist in putting together our annual conference, with over 4,000 attendees.  I have to say that our conferences were never this much fun!

 

Another highlight was meeting for lunch with another Utah blogger, Bonnie, City Home Country Home!  Even though I had never met her before, I felt like I knew her because I read her blog.  Thanks Bonnie!  Thanks also to the organizers, teachers, vendors, and to my sister Jacqueline and her daughter Jessica for making it so much fun!

 

 Thanks for dropping by my Red Couch!!

 



Making Snowmen in Memory of the Tragedy in Connecticut

 

We had our first snowstorm here -- about six inches.  Today my daughter Talley was out making snowmen, and I decided to join her in making them.  Like you, I am stunned and so horriby saddened about the terrible loss in Connecticut.  My daughter Talley is in the sixth grade.  Excited about life, excited about Christmas.  Like you, I feel helpless about the tragedy in Connecticut, but I decided to go join her, because life is too short.  Dirty kitchens and laundry and present wrapping and cookie baking can wait, but making snowmen with my daughter can't. 

 

 

Let us all pray for those who have passed on, for their loved ones, those that were injured physcially or emotionally, and for the whole Sandy Hook community.

 

 

 

My New Countertops -- From Drab to Fab!

Before

It is a sad reality of life sometimes that when we are moving that we fix up our home for a buyer.  The things that bothered us when we move into a home....that we think we will fix up, we sometimes never get around to....until we ourselves are in the seller's position.  I didn't like green countertops when we were buying the home, but they were other things about the home that I loved, so I ignored the countertops.  As time went on, there were other more important things to spend our money on than countertops.  Needless to say, my old countertops were not a great backdrop for my food pictures. 

After

When I new that we were going to sell our home, I called my sister Jacqueline, Purple Chocolat Home, and asked if she could help me stage my home. She immediately said, "Well you are going to have to get rid of those green countertops!" She backed up her advice with action because she and her husband own a company called Whitewater, and they manufacture and install countertops. They have a new man-made, internationally marketed, product, called Tyvarian. It is a solid suface countertop that provides the look of natural stone, but doesn't take on stains, and scratches can be easily sanded out.  They have lots of gorgeous colors available.  Thanks Jacqueline and Kirk for our new countertops.

I love how the new sink fits in so perfectly.

,

One of my favorite features of the countertops is the what I termed "the big boy edge."  It just really gives the kitchen a more dramatic feel.

I love the peaceful feeling that the countertops bring to our kitchen.  Lately, there hasn't been a lot of cooking or baking going on in the kitchen -- moving has a way of sapping your energy.

I did make some sugar cookies and cupcakes for my son's Eagle Scout Court of Honor, and I loved rolling out the sugar cookies on these solid surface countertops.

Moving Update:

Our home was under contract, an inspection was done, and an appraisal was begun, but not finished and the buyer backed out.  We are now back to square one.  My husband leaves, solo, on the 8th of August for Virginia.  The seller decided that he didn't like the area,  and even though he accepted a position here, he wanted to try to move somewhere else as soon as possible; he decided to rent instead of buy.   This area, as my children say, is a "jeep-n, fish-n, hunt-n, camp-n, 4-wheel-n, dirtbike-n, hike-n" kind of place.  There is little night life for a single guy from the city.

Thanks for dropping by to view my new countertops.

Posted with the following:

MM

Dish Lovers Should Never Move Cross Country

Hello and welcome to Red Couch Recipes.

Some of my followers may have noticed that I have been absent from the blogging world.  I have been absent because we have been in the process of making job decisions, preparing our home to sell, and putting our home up for sale.   We live in a small rural area in Southeastern Utah, and we are moving to Northern Virginia.  That will be quite a change for our family!  Wanting a better, more stable employment situation, my husband applied for jobs this year.  He received five job interviews, went to four of them, and received three job offers.  We picked the job that seemed to be the best and decided to move.

No, I have not given up on blogging but with the packing, painting, and cleaning, I just haven't had the time.  We also put in new solid surface (Tyvarian) countertops in our kitchen, and remodeled a bathroom.  I will show you the before and after pictures in a future post.  The housing market is very slow in our area, we pray to be able to leave for Virginia in August as a family.

Many of our things are packed up and in storage, but I still have a lot of dishes to pack.  Like my title said, dish lovers should never move cross country.

I hope you have been having a great summer.

Meet Ruby the Rescued Cat

Welcome to Red Couch Recipes!  I have been MIA from blogging, posting and visiting, because we have a new kitty in the home -- Ruby, the newest Red Couch family member.  About three weeks ago when driving home with my teenagers on a country road near our home, we saw something in the road.  I thought it was a plastic grocery bag, and I swerved to not hit it.  As we passed the "bag", we realized it was a little kitty -- sitting in the road!  No, she was not crossing the road, she was sitting in the road.  Instinctively, we turned around and the teenagers ran out and picked it up. They brought it to the car and realized that this poor little kitty really stank!  Something traumatic had happened to her.  We took the poor, starving kitty home and gave it a bath, and later gave her two more baths.    She was just skin and bones, and didn't seem to mind the bath at all!  All the while, I kept on thinking, "What am I going to tell my huband?"  Unlike me, he is not a huge cat fan.  We have one other inside/outside cat and one outside cat that came with the home. 

Don't let this little cute face fool you, she is actually getting ready to pounce on one of the other cats. 

When my husband came home, I related the story to him and asked him, "What would you have done?"  He couldn't say anything because he would have done the same thing.  She has grabbed our heart; she is a little sweetie.  In three weeks she has doubled her size!  I saw a cartoon in the paper today that reminded me of Ruby.  A little boy told his mother that she needed to sit down because the cat needed a lap to sit in.  At first, Ruby was very needy; I felt like I had a baby in the home because she always wanted to be held.  Now she has settled in and hopefully I can get back to visiting and posting.

I know of two other cats that aren't too happy about Ruby coming to stay!

 

Ruby is a spitfire and can climb this tree so fast!

She has stollen all of our hearts!

My daughter named her Ruby and it just seemed to fit.  It is also fun to say "Ruby Doobie Doobie Doobie Do!"

"Egg-citing News"

We have eggs!  My youngest daughter went to the chicken coop this past week and came back inside and said, "Mom, someone is playing a trick on me!"  When I asked her why she replied, "There are a ton of eggs outside in the chicken coop."  THERE WERE TWENTY-THREE EGGS!  No, not a trick -- her chickens began laying eggs and we didn't realize it.

Zach and Melba

Talley won her chicken, named Zach, in a chicken race this year in Melba, Idaho.  She also took home one of her cousin's chickens, we named Melba, and they finally began laying!  Those little sneaky hens were laying them in a cat carrier that Talley had placed in the coop!  Talley never saw them going in the cat carrier so she never checked!  WHAT FUN!  Those naughty little hens chose the cat carrier to lay -- not the nesting boxes my husband made!  They had almost ran out of laying space!

Just thought I would share this funny story!

Hens and Roosters

Are these roosters or hens?  Only time will tell...I am joining Shelia at Note Songs for her Roosters and Chickens  Party. 

My children have longed for chickens for quite some time  This year at the Melba, Idaho 4th of July celebration my children entered the chicken race.  Talley, our 10 year old, caught a chicken and was determined to keep it!  I just couldn't say no, even though I have never wanted chickens.  Corbyn, her little cousin from Idaho couldn't bring his chicken home on the plane to Arizona so we ended up with two chickens.  The kids carried them home for the 9 hour drive home in a box on their laps.

The children named their chickens Zach and Melba;  Melba was named after Melba, Idaho where we were visiting Aunt Dawnell and Jeff and their family.   Talley made a sign to hang on the chicken run.

Talley likes to play tricks with her chickens.

She likes to hold them.

We have been making a chicken coop as a family project this summer.  It's not finished yet, but it soon will be.  What color should we paint it?  We are leaning to red with white trim.  I am sure the pictures of the finished chicken coop will make their way to may blog.

Most the time they spend time in their chicken run, but they LOVE getting out and eating bugs -- we have a ton of grasshoppers that need to be eaten.  Unfortunately,

they wreak havoc on my husband's wildflowers as they hunt and peck for bugs-- they stamp on anything in their way.

I would have never thought that I could enjoy chickens, but it is because Talley loves them so.

We have gone chicken crazy and have watched the movie "The Egg and I" starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert.  It's a fun romp chronicling a city slicker married couple who on a whim buy a country home and start raising chickens for their eggs.

"Hey, are you lookin' at me?"  I sure hope you are a hen Zach!

Go visit Shelia at her Roosters and Chickens Party.  Most likely, there probably won't be many live chickens but lots of chicken accessories and chicken tablescapes.