Autumn Cookie Decorating Party at Bello Gardens!

November 2nd, 2024

By: Charlotte Hendrey

In my past visits to Bello Gardens, I have enjoyed organizing coloring activities, and this time I wanted to organize an even more exciting activity for the guests. I know that they love sweets, so I had the idea to host a cookie decorating party for them!

Last night, (Friday), I bought all the supplies I needed to bake pumpkin and maple-leaf shaped sugar cookies. an assortment of colored frostings for the guests to use. When they saw me unloading all the colorful sprinkles and candy, they were super excited to join the fun.

They all decorated at least 2–3 cookies, and we spent an hour talking while decorating cookies and filling in coloring pages. Donna (on the left) loved the cookies so much that she asked me to write the recipe down for her, because they reminded her of the cookies her mother used to bake for her and her siblings. Peter and Ralph (middle) loved the chocolate chips especially. Jo was smiling the whole time as she ate her pumpkin cookie!

Setting up this activity taught me a lot about expensing. I bought all the ingredients, and saved the receipts to learn how to create an invoice which I used to get reimbursement for the ingredients. The supplies for the cookies costed more than expected, and were out of the budget.

However, the strategy i used for bulk buying will allow me to come in under budget for at least three more cookie decorating sessions. For example, I bought white vanilla frosting, and used food dye to make orange frosting. Now, I can use the rest of the white frosting and the food dye to make christmas colored frosting for a Christmas party with the guests . I also have many left overs, (plates, popsicle sticks, etc.) that can be used for future activities, so it was a good investment.

For the next party I will only need to buy a tube of cookie dough and frosting which should be around $15 and will cover about ten participants. So, after 4 parties, the cost per party to Bello Gardens will be $105 which comes out to just a bit above $25 per party, so very close to the $25 budget.

I also found that some of the small decisions turned out to be very good. For example, I used small containers for the frosting so each resident can have their own — this was a very good decision because some residents licked the spreader sticks (double dip for the win!). I also decided to splurge a bit and buy chocolate chips. Some residents didn’t want to participate …that is until they saw that they would get their own small container of chocolate chips!

What could I improve on? Well, next time is thanksgiving, and then christmas. I won’t need to buy any special cookie cutters because I already have them, and I can also use some sprinkles I have at home to stay under budget.

I considered today a valuable learning experience, and now that I have an idea of how much a cookie decorating party costs and how much time it takes to bake the cookies and make the icing, I can use that experience to improve my timing/spending in the future. I also learned that one doesn’t realize how quickly receipts add up. I was quite surprised and a bit nervous when I submitted my invoice for $47 dollars, but I feel good about the fact that the supplies will last for several more parties.