When Lydia sent me email suggestion that I host another Drop In and Decorate event for Mother’s Day, I was excited. I had thought about doing something at the end of April, to celebrate my birthday, but tying it into Mother’s Day was a great idea. Immediately, I began to think about good recipients.
Drop In and Decorate is the brain child of Lydia, from The Perfect Pantry. The idea is to make a bunch of plain sugar cookies and invite your friends over to help decorate, then donate to an organization in your community. A party with a purpose! I hosted one of these events back in December, and we decorated 95 cookies to donate to the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford. This time, I invited twice the amount of people and aimed to decorate many more cookies.
Donna suggested Haven House and CORA, two organizations in San Mateo County that help battered women. I called both organizations and determined their needs. Both were having Mother’s Day celebrations, so the cookies would be welcomed with open arms.
Last night, I hosted a Mom’s Night In and Cookie Decorating, and 10 friends came to help decorate over 160 cookies. For us, it was mostly fun – we had wine, appetizers and good conversation. But in the back of our minds was the idea that we were reaching beyond our social network to help other women in our community. And the results were amazing!
In the end, because I cannot count while baking, we ended up decorating way more cookies than necessary for the two organizations. Since CORA and Haven House only needed 75 all together, I took the other 85 cookies over to Ronald McDonald House for their Mother’s Day celebrations. Three great organizations in the Bay Area and it was a pleasure to provide cookies to all!
Great big thank yous to my friends who stopped over to decorate (Stacey, Lisa, Charissa, Donna, Christy, Kelly, Celia, Sue and Noreen) and big thanks to Marsha who provided several batches of icing and her collection of Wilton tips. And thank you to Lydia for the advice on hosting a great party – if you want to do something similar, check out her Tips and Techniques.
May 8th, 2009 at 5:59 am
A big thank you to all of your friends who came to decorate and to you for hosting your second Drop In & Decorate event as part of our coast-to-coast Mothers’ Day celebration. The cookies are beautiful and I can just imagine the smiles on the faces of the women and children who are lucky enough to receive them.
May 10th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Beautiful cookies! I decorated for Drop In too and can’t wait to drop off all of the cookies. I bet the women and children who received absolutely loved them!
May 12th, 2009 at 11:47 am
As someone who mixes the colors for Lydia’s Drop In events, I say: Great icing colors – so bright and cheerful for spring! It is heartening to see the Drop In spirit grow and spread!
May 12th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Gorgeous cookies…..thanks so much for hosting a successful Drop In.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:22 am
The cookies look wonderful! Your recipients must have been so pleased
May 20th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Lydia – thank you for the nice write up about the event on your blog. It was loads of fun (again!)
Maris – isn’t it a great project? For those of us who like to bake, it is nice to find an outlet for our creativity.
Lucia – I might have to email you separately – I have such trouble with red, and as you can see, my orange turned out a little too light as well. I would love to know the secret for solid, bold colors!
Cindy and Kat -thank you for visiting, it is wonderful to see so many new folks who rally around this program!
Cheers,