Cookie Time

It used to be that I decorated Christmas cookies with my mom when I was a kid.  Then I grew up and got married.  I decorated Christmas cookies with my husband, who couldn't understand my obsession with having the right color.  He had grown up in a household where to decorate Christmas cookies meant white frosting on all the cookies with colored sprinkles on top. 

Not in my household.  There had to be green for the trees and brown for the reindeer and the tree trunks. There better be red for the candy canes and for decorating the ornaments on the trees.  Don't forget yellow for the stars, and black for Frosty's hat!  He lived with my craziness and was more than happy to hand over the reigns to his brother's wives!

For the next few years, my sister-in-laws and I would gather at one of our homes and decorate away, spending a whole day, maybe two getting all of our cookies done.  But alas, I moved away from them and that became harder to do.

But I moved nearer a homeschooling mom of five like me!  For the last few years she and I have taken turns driving to each other's home and letting the kids decorate away!

It is so much fun, chatting, watching the kids decorate, eating good food, drinking good wine, I don't know how we'd make it through the holidays without our annual tradition.

The time came last week for our decorating extravaganza, so Melanie loaded up four of her kids and drove to my house this time, and following are pictures of what we accomplished.

I donate cookies for the annual Ladies Bake Sale at church.  This year Melanie helped me decorate them and we had fun looking up new ideas on the internet and trying to imitate them:

The plaid was fun to do!

This is the first time I've used royal icing on my sugar cookies.  I'm happy with the way it looks!

The churches are for my Sunday School class.  I have to pipe their names on them yet.

 Here is what my living room and dining room looked like during the cookie decorating.

Nathan and Luke

Sam

 Part of the cookies the kids decorated:

While most of the other kids got bored after finishing about a dozen cookies, Abby and Sarah, kept at it, inspired by what their moms were doing.  They became quite good at frosting the cookies to look really nice.

 Here is one of the angels Abby decorated:

We were all glad to sit down and eat a delicious supper of lasagna and garlic bread and, for the adults, a bottle of Cabernet.

Smile!