Hi Robin,

Had a little too much going on this year to get our cookie exchange to you in a timely manner. Nonetheless, we had a wonderful time. Here is a capsulated view of our event.

This year’s event was held at: Emma’s Rose Tea Room in St. Petersburg, FL. Hosting the event at this venue provided us with 3 different rooms to host the Convention (Craft Show), Campaigning (Judging) and Dining (Tasting) on biscuits, scones, flavorful herb teas and delicate mini-sandwiches. This was a departure from our usual venue, but worked out in that there was no clean-up and we had the entire Tea Room (name of Business) to our selves.

Each participant was assigned a state and had to campaign for the right to receive enough electoral votes to win the Nomination of Best Cookie. It was a bipartisan event with 23 states represented! Crafts and games all had a political backdrop. We were inspired by this year’s Presidential Campaign.

The invitation was inspired from Presidential Christmas Cards of years past. Awards were aligned with the Presidential Seal and Cabinet. Best Cookie – President, Runner-up – Vice President, Best Container – Secretary of State and Runner-up Container – Chief of Staff. We even had a true to life size poster cut-out of President Obama. Gifts for the Presidential Cabinet were selected from President Obama gift collections.

This year will be hard to top, but we certainly look forward to 2009 Cookie Exchange.

I have attached some of our pictures from the 2008 event. Feel free to use as you please.

Valerie B. Williams