These bow tie onesie cookie favors were for my sister-in-law Vale who threw a baby shower for her friend Anya, who is due in about two weeks now (!) with baby #2 -- and it's a boy! Vale incorporated beautiful hues of blues in the baby shower decor, served delicious food (include bread and quiche from Tartine and donuts), fresh flowers (including lovely lemons in the bouquets!) and a big photo collage on the wall in the shape of heart.
Vale and Anya are "mommy group" friends from when their now-8 and 1/2 year-old boys were just wee ones. Vale hosted a beautiful baby shower at her home in San Francisco and was kind enough to send me some real party pictures (my cookies included) -- which I admittedly live for. Simply because whenever I brainstorm, design, and decorate cookies, I am always trying to visualize the theme, decor, and atmosphere. I always know the date of the event that I made cookies for in my brain and wonder that day how everything is going. I'm mostly just excited for my customer and their guest of honor and party guests and when a customer shares a glimpse of the celebration with me, it just makes me über happy.
While I'm on the subject of party pictures, Cole and I have some exciting business news to share. Since we moved from San Francisco to Concord, MA (the 'burbs, 20 miles outside of Boston) we have been working hard to grow the Photography business, which all started with Cole's dad - the amazingly talented fine art photographer Jim Stipovich. I fell in love with Cole for many reasons -- one of them being Cole's genuinely original and natural artistic eye that is always on. Another being his strong relationships with his family. I saw this through everything Cole does for and with every member of his family -- and visa-versa.
Jim, Cole, and Cole's sister, Vale, truly worked as a team on weddings, combining their individual strengths and together creating beautiful stories and works of art with their photographs. Cole's passion for photography is such big a part of him that in getting closer with him and his family, it was inevitable that I caught the photography bug. I've always been a picture taker but I began to really learn the craft of photography when Cole joined me as my date to my sister's wedding in Florence, Italy. (5 1/2 years ago!) We were barely able to walk 2 feet through Florence without stopping to take a photo of a door or detail on a building.
My own love for photography blossomed from there and has become more of a bond between Cole and I as I developed this blog -- Sweet Kiera -- and started photographing my baked goods with Cole late at night in my little studio. Before I knew it, my baked goods were being put on display at family and friend's parties, which led to more photographs of dessert tables, parties, details and yes, people too.
As Cole has grown professionally and taken greater ownership of his craft and the profession of photography, and as I left the "office world" to pursue my passion of baking and grow my role in the family photography business, we have come to absolutely love working together and are so excited about developing and growing this business together and hope to turn it into a lifetime career. I feel beyond lucky to have Cole as my husband and my business partner -- we truly both love what we do and we have the most enthusiastic, genuine support of BOTH of our amazing families rooting for us to make this business as successful as we dream it to be. We are more motivated and ready for it than ever.
Well, I've gotten myself in a tizzy over here. Do you know all I wanted to originally share with you, regarding that business news about party pictures was that we're now offering special event photography packages so that you can have your cookies and pictures of them too! This new service is just one part of a new name, brand, and website for our photography business that we are officially launching this week! If you are interested in adding photography services to a Sweet Kiera cookie order for any event -- a birthday, bridal or baby shower, etc. -- in the Boston or New York area, just shoot me an email at info@sweetkiera.com and I'd be happy to send you more info. I'll add a link hereand do a separate blog post to officially announce our *new* photography business in a few short days!
Finally -- thank you, Vale, for sharing your baby shower photos and congrats to you, Anya!!
