It's Auntie Geraldine's 95th birthday and although Auntie lives in Montana and you live in Miami, FL, you are determine to treat your sweet loved one with a box of homemade cookies. You've toiled long hours pouring love into each step of the baking and decorating process and now it's time to ship these tiny messengers of birthday salutations to Auntie.  Suddenly, the horrifying image of your cookies being tossed onto a pile of battered boxes in the back of a UPS truck, sets your stomach upside down. Oh the horror! What to do? If you're at the point of checking your bank account to see if you can fit a flight to Montana in your budget, put your mind at ease because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cookie crumbs. Here is my personal method for shipping cookies. It is not a 100% guarantee that every cookie will arrive unharmed, but in my experience most, if not all are safe and the few damages that have been inflicted were minor. I've never had a loved one or customer receive a delicious box of crumbs.


Supplies
box to hold cookies
larger box to hold box of cookies plus packing material
sheets of bubble wrap
card board scraps
scotch tape
newspaper, or shredded paper, or decorative tissue paper, or peanuts, or cloth, etc.
shipping tape

Once your cookies are ready for packing, individually wrap each cookie. I like to seal my cookies with a heat sealer in small plastic bags but plastic wrap works as well. If you have larger cookies or cookies with fine extensions that can easily break, cut little pieces of cardboard that are just slightly larger than the cookie and lay the cookie on this before sealing in a bag or wrapping with plastic wrap. You can place two cookies with a piece of cardboard sandwiched in between. If your cookies aren't decorated or don't have a gooey top, you can stack them on top of each other and wrap them together. 
Next, cut your bubble wrap so it will completely wrap around two cookies placed back-to-back or in the case of stacked cookies, around the lot, and then tape the bubble wrap securely. Once all the cookies are wrapped, place them into the smaller box.  It's better not to pile cookies on each other as the weight of each other may cause breakage, so place them vertically in the box. If you have stacks of cookies, lay them on one side so all are vertical. You can line this box with bubble wrap or some other cushioning material if you so desire. Fill in any gaps between cookies and the box with packing material and then seal the box shut with shipping tape. 
Take your smaller box and place it inside of the bigger box to estimate how much packing material you can fit around it. Remove the smaller box and line the base of the larger box with your chosen material, such as peanuts or newspaper. Now place your smaller box in the center of the padding and add more cushioning around the sides and on top of the box until it is completely encased in buffering material. Close and secure the larger box. Be sure to thoroughly tape it shut and if you're extra cautious, reinforce corners and seams with tape. 

Now you're ready to take a trip to your local post office or other such shipping service and leave your package in their capable hands feeling confident Auntie will be pleasantly surprised with a box of cookies that look like they just came fresh from the kitchen.

Lizbeth's is holding our first ever contest! It's simple and anyone can win! All you have to do is submit a unique idea for a cookie design, "like" our facebook page, and share the contest info on your facebook wall. It's that simple! All entries will be reviewed and one winner will be chosen! The winning entry will be created and the winner receives a half dozen cookies of their own design. Anyone can enter by simply messaging your design to us on Lizbeth's facebook. https://www.facebook.com/LizbethsPetiteSweets  Designs can be a detailed description or a sketch. For more information about the contest check out our events page. https://www.facebook.com/events/376969529071880/ You don't have to be an invited guest to participate. It's a come one come all!

Last night was my first public event. It was such a fun experience. For the event, I made nutella fudge brownies, vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cookies, and sugar cookies. For the display my husband and I did a little antique shopping and recycling of items we already own. With $20 cash in my pocket, we stopped by Lisa's Antiques on Mantoloking Rd. where we found two glass candlesticks, a glass cake plate, two lace table runners, and a large basket. Also I purchased two new, well old, cookie cutters that I plan to use for a new set of cookies. We purchased the whole lot for $15. I already had a small wooden tea tray, a large doily, and Tim's old baseball card holder and all these combined with my antique finds became my event display. 
The  antique table runners were laid out on the counter where everything was set up. I used the doily to dress up the little wooden tea tray and filled it with tea time cookies.Three of my own dinner/dessert plates were stacked in between the candlesticks to make a tier for the cupcakes. The Cake plate became a brownie stand and Tim spray painted his baseball card holder to make a display for the round flower cookies. The little ledges of the baseball card holder propped the cookies up for better viewing. The large basket made an excellent vehicle for transporting the cookies which I wrapped in a tablecloth for protection. I was so pleased with the overall look of our display. Not only was it very affordable, it was so vintage, which I adore.
We had a great evening and sold lots of a sweet yumminess to happy customers. 

My order of vanilla beans arrived today, just in time for the Showcase cookies. I've used vanilla beans in the past, but this time I didn't want to waste the fragrant pod, so here's a little story about my adventure with vanilla beans.
My beans arrived tucked up in an airtight bag labeled beanilla and when I snipped open the corner, a lovely mellow scent slipped out. Using a very sharp paring knife and little glass cutting board I slid the edge of my knife from one tip of the bean pod to the other, splitting the pod in two and revealing the grainy black cream hidden inside. With the back of my knife I scraped the beans from their coat and dropped them into a bowl with butter and sugar.
The pods lay there so bare and sad. I couldn't stand to throw all that delicate flowery flavor into the trash, so I wound each into two tiny glass jars and buried one in sugar and the other I drowned in raw honey. The leftover, unused pods were tightly wrapped in plastic and placed in glass jars for another day.

Vanilla bean can be added to almost any dessert and can be used as a substitute for Vanilla extract. There are some debates about substitution ratios. I personally used half a bean pod in exchange for one teaspoon of extract. The leftover pods are great for flavoring things like, honey and sugar to be used in coffee or tea. The pods can also be dried out and crumbled into powder that can be added to baked goods, frosting, tea, ice cream topping, puddings, etc. 
If you'd like to have your own bean adventure, I highly recommend purchasing your Vanilla beans from http://www.beanilla.com/ they are very affordable and shipping is free!

A dear friend of mine purchased a box of my tea time cookies. She's a photographer and in true photographer form, could not resist the temptation to capture some mouth watering poses. Here are a few of my favorites.
If you'd like to see more of Jess' work, including my own wedding photos, stop by her site and her facebook. Don't forget to give her a "like." 
http://capturedmomentsphotography09.shutterfly.com/ https://www.facebook.com/CapturedMomentsPhotoFL