decorating cookies

This year I seem to be fitting all of our tradition holiday stuff into the last few days before Christmas.  I'm determined to pack it all in and fill up my Christmas memory bank.  One thing that takes me back to my childhood is decorating cookies.  My sisters and I used to do this every year with my mom.  Now that I'm a mom I realize (and appreciate) just how much work goes into making it seem fun for the kids.


We use this sugar cookie recipe from Amanda at i am baker.  It is so yummy and easy to work with.  The boys could not stop eating the dough as we were trying to roll it out and make the cut outs.  

John takes his baking very seriously.  He likes to see how many cookies he can get from his dough.  He kept trying to 'beat his score'.

Luke, on the other hand.  Cut out a few cookies and then covered Thomas in flour and not so secretly ate the rest of his dough before leaving the table all together.



My super cute helpers...

Then came the fun part.  Decorating.  John has graduated to decorating very precisely and carefully.  Luke is still subscribes to the the more icing and sprinkles piled on the better theory.  As you can see from their finished projects below.

Luke decorated these two cookies, ate one and then left.  He is nothing if not sure of what he wants to do and not do.  John decorated about 6, ate his star, declared it wasn't fair that Luke was playing and he had to do all the work so he too left me in the kitchen to decorate the remaining cookies.  I decided that since I prefer my sugar cookies plain so do most people and therefore left half of them without icing.  Too bad, I keep having to 'try' the cookies and we may not have enough left for dessert tonight!