Tuesday, October 7, 2008

The Cookie Kitchen is Back In Business!

Yep. The Christmas cookie season has begun, believe it or not. I know it's not even Thanksgiving here in Canada yet, let alone the States, but we already received our first order in at cookiekitchen07@gmail.com for a repeat customer from last year. We already have the first few batches of cookies made. We already have little boys begging for cookies "for US! Not THEM!" Even Fred walked down to the kitchen tonight and commented that it smelled like a cookie factory in there.

The Cookie Kitchen is excited about things this year. We have been pouring over all the details of the business because we've had to adjust prices this year. Many of our ingredients have gone up which means that our cookies cost more to make, obviously. We've been gathering information from all our sources trying to find the best deals out there and we've done pretty well so far. Connie is the best business partner because she takes care of all those details. I just wait for her to tell me what to bake and when. I like that!

She sent me a copy of last year's statistics. We made about 3600 cookies last year that were sold. We made a lot more that were snarfed up by little munchkins (and some big munchkins, too), that were either broken or too dark or not dark enough or a little lopsided or simply begged for. Yes, we made lots of cookies, working around daily life as well as a broken finger, a chicken pox scare, a bout of the flu, and various other distractions. This year we're planning on even more orders because of last year's word of mouth AND an open house that we're going to be hosting for Watkins, The Cookie Kitchen, postScripts (This is my friend Julie's business. She makes customized address labels that are beyond classy! I love them!) and Tupperware. We're going to be handing out samples at our open house, hoping to entice a few more customers with our delicacies. This is at the beginning of November, and then at the end of November I have another Watkins event where I was asked to provide cookies for a baked goods table as well. No problem, I said, until I realized that this means a few hundred more cookies that I will need to bake! Ahh. No problem for The Cookie Kitchen! We've got our act together this year ... I hope.

When you start to make your Christmas cookies this year, pray for us. We want this business to be a blessing to others and we don't want to let our own responsibilities toward our families suffer because of this. We believe that God has given us this idea for a reason and we want to honor Him with our handiwork. It's been an interesting way to reach out to my neighborhood here, and because of it, I have met many new people and have even been able to talk to some of them about the Lord! This is what it's all about for us!

6 comments:

GramS said...

No wonder Laurel is singing Christmas Carols. She's smelling the fresh baked cookies all the way down here in Ohio!
Hope it all goes well for you.

The memories I have of Gram doing her baking (shoe boxes full) for teachers at school who ordered them, are renewed by your baking them now, too. Coming home from school to fresh baked cookies.... yummmmmmmm!

Karen said...

I should start, too, while it's cooler. Remember when we made Christmas cookies in Arizona with the airconditioning on?

heidiannie said...

You bring up so many memories of all the cookies I've made for the Bake Shop and Peninsula Holiday Shop. I might make cut outs this year- but I'm not making thousands of cookies ever again! My memories are of my mother patiently painting the first layer of glaze on a Christmas tree- her fingers dark green from the dye. She always managed to break a couple when Luke got home from school.

liz said...

We are also starting to think about what we're going to bake! (I got a new cookie magazine...but we already have such a long list of cookies we LOVE!) Yummy!

Anonymous said...

Wow! I can taste them already! They were so good last year. I even hid some so nobody else could find them, and enjoyed them after all the Christmas excitement went away. (And I didn't even feel guilty!) We'll keep you in our prayers.

Ohio_Momto3boys said...

I'd be happy to help with any of the too dark, too lopsided, too broken, to chocolatey sample batches... It's the least I can do LOL