One more year…. one word to describe it, bittersweet. My daughter Lillie turned 9 years old and we celebrated her birthday with a gymnastics/basketball party.

Let me show you the cake first which features her love and dedication for gymnastics.

Because editing pictures and preparing everything for the blog takes me so much time. The last picture shows you a preview of the cookies. Once I get those ready to post, I’ll show them to you.

I am so excited to share with you the following post.

On April 20th my daughter Lillie participated in another gymnastics meet at Jacobs Gymnastics. This was an all around meet where they compete in all the apparatus – Beam, Floor, Bars and Vault. I had the wonderful opportunity to make cookies for them again.

A few months ago, I made medal cookies only for the Superstars team (the younger girls – Lillie’s team). This time, the older team that competed later that morning got sweet treats also.

Coming up with the design and colors took a little bit of time.  The inspiration for the final design came from all the medals my little Lillie has won over the past couple of years, most of them are stars. The Superstars’ group wear a hot pink with black leotard and no matter what happens, they all deserve a gold first place medal.

Here are the gymnastics medals designs for the April 2013 meet.

The Superstars group is made out of little girls that are 5-7 years of age. I couldn’t resist having these little gymnasts on the cookie. We have one girl balancing on one foot on the beam and another one making the split.

I made only a few medal cookies without a design, but they were the ones that got treated with the real gold color. You may not be able to see it, but they really looked like gold medals! It takes a lot of spray. Every cookie has a pink or red ribbon.

I made one gold medal cookie specially for Lillie.  She was actually worried that there would’t be enough cookies and she was not going to get one. I was laughing inside…. I didn’t say anything though.

 Hot Pink was the main color this time. One of the cookies features a gymnast wearing a colored leotard. I still like the ones with the solid color, but this time they were pink.  You can see my other gold medal cookies here.

And here’s my little All Around Champion.

It’s really getting tougher and the fight for first place gets tighter. All the girls have been improving so much as they get stronger with time. I still see videos and pictures of previous meets and I can see how far they have come. They are just an amazing group of little girls.

Congratulations Sweetheart. We love you so much.

This following post makes me tear up. Seriously.

My daughter Lillie has been attending gymnastics sessions for the past… 2 years I believe. I’m not going to say this because she is my daughter, but she is very talented.

I absolutely love seeing her in each and every single apparatus, but my favorite by far has to be the bars which happens to be the one she excels at.

Sometimes they have meets where all they do is the floor routines, it is called a Tumbling meet. Well, this past weekend she had another meet where she competed in all of the apparatus (these are the good ones!). I felt the urge call to make some cookies for all of the Superstar girls – that’s the little group’s name.

When thinking about what to do, the most obvious cookie design that came to my head was… Medals!! I’m so excited to show you what I came up with.

I made three different sets/types of medals.  One of them has the edible ribbons attached to them. The other set has the ribbon going through a whole in the cookie.

I have the third set of medal cookies here. I think they are my favorites, but the most delicate to work with.

The focus of this cookie is a gymnast’s silhouette in different positions or apparatus. Two jumping or leaping gymnasts showing their elasticity. One sitting and balancing on the beam and of course the gymnast going in circles on the bars.

With this  particular design I made the mistake of making the silhouettes first and then deciding the size of cookie cutter I was going to use. I made several girls on the beam, but I the beam was so long that it didn’t fit on the medal so very few were finished. My kids ended up using them to make their own cookies though.

I guess the most difficult part of making these cookies was trying to hold my breath while I made the silhouette. I had to get each and each and every curve perfectly positioned. I was gasping for air after piping each gymnast!

There was sooo much glitter on these cookies. I looove glitter and I use it as often as I possibly can! Unfortunately you can’t see it very well in my bad pictures, but I had to make them shine like gold right?

Each and every little gymnast received a medal sugar cookie for their great performance when the competition ended. They were all wonderful and they all look so cute.

Here’s one last shot  of the medal cookies I made thinking of my sweet little champion, Lillie.

We are very proud parents of a little champion. Lillie won second place in floor and beam, first place in beam and bars, and earned a first place medal in the all around competition for the second time in a row.

Congratulations Sweet Heart. We love You.