Cookies

My daughter loves to do sculpture, but doesn't think of herself as an artist.  Except when it comes to this:  painting cookies.

This weekend, she made a batch of sugar cookies.  At first, she did it to preoccupy my preschooler.  She gave him dough and helped him roll it out with a tiny roller.  He picked an arrow-shaped cutter and got to make a whole tray of cookies.  She helped him decorate them however he wanted. 

When he was done (by done, I mean he was screaming, "I'M DONE!! GET ME DOWN!"), she made beautiful cookies with the rest of the dough.  She added food coloring to some and blended the colors so they looked tye-died.  She even made the icing (equally yummy).  The cookies were delicious and beautiful.  She came up with several designs that she loved.

This one is my favorite - a broken heart.

We told her she should sell cookies to make money for college.  My sister (who is also an artist but doesn't call herself an artist despite the fact she teaches art classes) sells pottery at art shows nearly every weekend.  She told us the art shows that would be good for selling cookies and suggested my daughter should sell them at school - black-market style - in the halls, under the desk, in the cafeteria but out of sight any authorities who might suspect...well...special ingredients.

As she painted more cookies, she eventually came up with an amazing idea - an idea to sell cookies as a fundraiser for the middle school in our district, specifically for the music program.  Every student in 6th grade is required to choose an instrument or join chorus.  She has a lot of friends that hated to sing but had to choose chorus because they couldn't afford an instrument.  Violin rental for a year is something like $180.  Cellos and bass are twice that amount. 

Her idea is to sell cookies at school events, craft shows, outside our neighborhood pool, out of a bag while walking a 5K, anywhere she can imagine - to raise money to pay for instrument rentals for kids that need financial help. 

I've never seen her so excited.  She is planning every detail and even emailed the principal at the middle school to ask for a meeting to discuss her plan and to get permission to sell cookies at events at the school.  She's working on figuring out the cost of ingredients for a batch of cookies, how many cookies she can make in one sitting, and how to package them.  Now she wants to take a business class next year, something she wouldn't have considered before.  Yay!