Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Birthday Planes for Quinn Kong!

An old high school friend of Dina's (actually, she was his prom date!) ordered some vintage inspired airplanes for his son's 2nd birthday. Super cute because the theme is "Quinn Kong" (Quinn, the name and Kong, the movie). They sent us over a King Kong vintage poster, from which we drew inspiration for these red planes. Red is usually a pretty hard color to work with, but we were really happy with the red we achieved. We hope Quinn Kong has a heck of a birthday!
Starting to come to life
All bagged up and ready to hit Los Angeles
Blurry but still cute!

Monday, December 14, 2009

What, More Xmas Kookies?!

This time, it was for pleasure. Wendy's pleasure, that is (as Dina's been delving into the world of brownies of late). Here's some fun winter kookies made by Wendy's hand for her family and friends!

Friday, December 11, 2009

Christmas Packs

The photos are stinky, but we did some cute Christmas gift packs. The snowmen were our favorite, so much our favorite that we made an extra batch for some of our friends and family, too!

Birthday order
Christmas variety pack

Monday, December 7, 2009

It's Beginning to Look a lot like...





Christmas! After a long winter's break, we've woken up to fill some holiday orders. Should we take another long nap after Christmas, here's wishing everyone an early Happy Christmas!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Rubber Ducky, You're the One!

We had our little kookies at the Golden Gate Mothers Group Holiday Boutique this evening. To prep, we made a few batches of our duckies and then made some polka dot kookies that we could break up as samples.
At first, our table seemed a little bare in comparison to all the cool clothes, jewelry and various other wares that were there (including Blueblood, whose owner Dina originally met at Crissy Field when they both used to go to the beach each weekend with their respective pups!).
However, we quickly realized that where we might have lost on decor, we made up on by having kookie samples. Ain't nuthin' like some free grub!!!

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Even Scientists Like Kookies

Thanks Genentech for the order! We don't know what Process Improvement Awards are, but we hope our kookies made it taste better!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Loca Kookie Lady!

Even after our huge order this past week, making, baking, decorating, packaging, labeling, and delivering over 800 kookies, Dina still did 50 more for her son's preschool Halloween Faire in the eleventh hour. Esa mujer es loca!!!

Friday, October 23, 2009

Halloween Blitz

This week was crazy with Halloween kookies. The 500 order for a Halloween party inspired the 4 pack you see here. And incidentally, we're very happy to say that this four pack is ALL NATURAL. That's right people, as in no preservatives and no chemical additives and all that fun stuff that moms don't really like to see in their kids' food, but will sometimes pretend is not there anyway. We've created this option of All-Natural food coloring for the people that can't pretend. While we prefer the vibrancy that regular ol' food coloring gives our icing, we get that our organic kookies are very compatible with all-natural icing. Enjoy!

DBK Identified

In case you were wondering what Death by Kookie looks like, here it is:
140 for Genentech in the front drying and 535 in the back for GGMG's Halloween Party. Whew.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Calling in Sick to our Blog: We have DBK

We've been sort of absent lately, and that's because we've been struck with a phenomenon that we'll call "Death by Kookie" or DBK (cue ominous music here). DBK is when the orders are huge and all-consuming, but so are our lives. Basically, the equation is something like: family needs + mass kookie orders = AAAACKKKK!!!

The good news is that we're optimists (or at least Wendy is) and we learn from our experiences. So we know now how to manage the kookie production better to make sure that home life still feels good and we return to sleeping at least 12 hours each night and eating bon bons all day. Oh, just kidding, but we're at least shooting for not being so exhausted for preschool drop-offs in the morning!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Keep it Simple, Stupid!

Well, we're not really stupid, although sometimes we certainly feel that way. But the point is that sometimes a cookie cutter is so cute, it doesn't call for much. Here's a 4 pack of animals that we did for a baby shower.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

The Little Big Guy

Dina's little man turned 3 last Monday and she made these little party favors for his playground party.
Sanding sugar on these 3's because Dina packaged them before the 3 had time to dry! Lesson learned. Lesson number 2? Sanding sugar is a nice cover up (not like a beach sarong, but for icing mess-ups).
Here are the ones that managed to dry before Dina got her grubby fingers on them.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

For the Wee Ones

Have we mentioned that little kids like our kookies?
The big kid in the background didn't mind them, either!

P.S. These were the 75 birthday kookies in the last post!

Monday, September 21, 2009

Happy 75th Mom!

Dina's mom turned 75 this last weekend! Yowza! She's off to L.A. this coming weekend for a birthday celebration in honor of her mother, and made these monograms for the party favors. She's not sure whether her mom would really appreciate actually having the number "75" on the kookie, but hey, it is the truth and mom always told Dina to tell the truth!!!
Happy 21st Birthday Mom!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Baking for Pleasure

You know how when you eat the same cereal every morning, you get so tired of it that you don't want it for, like, 2 years? Or if you work in an ice cream shop, people think that's so cool but really, the last thing you want to do is ingest any cold creamy substance? Well, baking kookies can be like that some times. There must be something about smelling the same smell every day that gets to someone. Kind of like Chinese water torture...slow, but deadly? Ok, we're exaggerating.

But we use Baking for Pleasure as little breaks away from Hello Kookie, to remind us that we really do enjoy and love this process. There's something about baking that is simply so satisfying. You feel good doing it, but you feel even better knowing that you're producing something that people truly enjoy. When you give someone a kookie (or a cookie) or a cupcake or a brownie or whatever it is, you just know that you're taking that person back to fourth grade where all they really want afterwards is either a hug from their mom or a glass of milk (or both).

Here's Dina's latest installment: whole wheat oatmeal chocolate chip cookie bars. Sort of healthy, but really not.
Even raw looks pretty darn yummy.
Baked was pretty good, too. Almost too many chocolate chips, if you can believe it.


P.S. This turned out to be a great Sunday activity since it was raining today in San Francisco. In September! What's up with that?!

Blast Off!

For Liam's 3rd birthday, we took a cue from his birthday invitation and made the little guy some rocket kookies. We hope Liam has a blast eating them, as we had a blast making them!
We tried to think of some cute saying combining Liam and rocket together that we could write on the kookie, but alas, "Liam's 3!" seemed to be the most appropriate of all.
Ok, it's a little patriotic, but primary colors seemed perfect for a preschooler!
60 kookies ready to be delivered to the Noe Valley moms crew. Thanks, Liam!

Monday, September 7, 2009

The Best of Both Worlds

For Molly's birthday, why make her choose? She should get kookies and eat her (cup)cake too! Happy Birthday Molly, and thanks for your order, Stacey!
Off to L.A. we go!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Weee're Baaaack!!

From a long vacation, that is. We're back in the kitchen and are so excited that we received an order from Malinda Lo! Malinda's book Ash, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella, is already out in stores. Our order is being sent to her publisher, Little Brown, as promotional items, and we're also making a big custom batch for her official book launch here in San Francisco. We did our best to do right by the gorgeous cover of Ash, and are so happy for Malinda's major accomplishment. Kudos!
The cover of Ash is amazing, so we tried to get the feel of the book with the grey backdrop and deep-hued script
All packaged and ready to go! Look! We have labels!!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Continuing Education

Sounds like something we had to do in our former careers, but not now! Now it's for pleasure, and sure, a little education, too. Here's the results from a cookie decorating class Wendy took recently at Spun Sugar.
Best tip of the day? It's only a cookie, for crying out loud! Don't sweat the small stuff, people are going to EAT them!

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Wedding Gift Surprise

Some good friends of Dina's were celebrating their union with a wonderful dinner in Mill Valley. It was a small, intimate event, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to give a personalized gift (we thought it'd be nice to make some personalized wedding favors). Fine china and crockpots are great, but sometimes, it's nice to get something so obviously made just for you!

M +
A =
Yay!
Congrats M&A on a lifetime of happiness!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Quacky Birthday!

Happy Birthday A, our little friend in Los Angeles. We hope you like our kookies (maybe your Mom could prominently feature them in her next movie? Nah! We're just happy she's featuring them at your party!).

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Yes, We Do Make Kookies, Too!!!

We've had a lot of non-Kookie digressions as of late, so let's get back on track!

As a thank you to Dina's son's preschool for a wonderful summer session, a batch of these were specially-made. The preschool is in an adorable red schoolhouse with white trimmed windows, just what you'd imagine a preschool should look like!

Monday, July 20, 2009

Baking for Pleasure

Inspired by Bakerella's awesome blog and her cake pops, this was Sunday's adventure:

Cake balls (cake mixed with frosting, formed into little balls, dipped in chocolate, topped with sprinkles. Whew!)
Looking super cute in their little to-go boxes (one for the babysitter, the other for the dogwalker who let Dina & Wendy in when Dina locked herself out of the house!).
The only thing is that the cake balls are pretty sweet. After all, it's cake, mixed with frosting, then dipped in chocolate! As Dina's husband said "Don't let the kids have too many of those. They're like speed balls."

So the kids actually didn't get any (yet). But they did get some whole wheat banana muffins!

Friday, July 17, 2009

Bad Kookie!

Almost like a naughty puppy, sometimes kookies misbehave. Bad kookie, bad!!
Went into the oven flat, came out with Aqua Net style poof, circa 1987.

Legalese

We don't like to get dirty (unless it's in flour), but our art is copyright protected. Dina will drop the apron and throw back on her attorney suit if need be. Just ask!