"MONSTER" SUCCESS

Before school let out, my friend Kristin asked if I would make some cookies for her adorable son Miles' birthday.  The party was going to be based on Where the Wild Things Are, a famous children's book written by Maurice Sendak.

I have to admit that I was quite nervous when she told me what the theme was, but I had a lot of time to think about how I would make the cookies.

Well...a couple of weeks before Miles' party, I still had NO IDEA how I was going to make the cookies.  I looked for inspiration in the book itself and even Google-d images of other "Where the Wild Things Are" cookies, but could not make a decision!

Finally, I came across an image of the crown Max wears in the story.  Since the monsters were too hard to make, I decided why not make cookies with crowns on them.  After all, the crown is a recognizable symbol from the book.

I had some extra cookie dough and icing so I decided to do a trial run and...umm...yeah...I was NOT HAPPY with how they turned out!  I decided to abandon that idea and do more brainstorming.

A few days before I had to start on the cookies, my niece Alee was visiting.  We were talking about the cookies when she encouraged me to go ahead and try making the monster.  She also suggested icing the colors of the monster's sweater behind his image.

Well, I guess I just needed that little bit of encouragement because the cookie went from this

boring old crown

to this

hello monster!

Kristin was expecting to get crown cookies so she was quite surprised when she saw the cookies I ended up making!  She placed them in plastic bags and topped them with a label made by our friend Cynthia.

wrapped and ready to be given out as favors

So...thanks to Alee for the encouragement!!  

monsters never looked so cute!

Until next time!

P.S.  Check out Kristin's blog Yum Belly