As it turns out, coordinating the schedules of four adults and 4 kids can be a lot more difficult than one would think. Mix in the stomach flu and things get a little bit crazy. Things get busy this time of the year, but a few years ago my Mother-In-Law came up with an idea to have cookie day. All of the girls get together and make Christmas cookies. The guys wanted in so they decided it was a good day to go do manly things like chop down a Christmas tree.
Each year we try and set aside a day (assuming everyone stays healthy) and knock out a few different types of cookies while the guys pick out the Christmas trees. This year things got a little complicated, schedules didn’t line up and two rounds of the stomach flu made cookie day a little bit more difficult to plan but we pulled it off before Christmas and had a wonderful day.
Generally speaking we make three types of cookies: sugar cookie cutouts, chocolate chip & peanut butter. With a doubled batch of sugar cookie cutouts and a single batch of the other two we easily made around 13 dozen cookies. Split between all of us, set some aside for Christmas eve and it wasn’t too bad.
The first year we made Christmas cookies my niece was about 3. As she went through each of my cookie cutters she came across a small gingerbread man. That particular year she was pretty excited about Baby Jesus so she started referring to the gingerbread man as Baby Jesus. We learned quickly that if you are going to do any small cookies they need a tray of their own so this year we filled an entire tray with Baby Frosty, Baby Jesus and some baby snowflakes to keep them company.
As the cutouts are cooked the kids begin cooking and we knock out the rest of the cookies. We decided to change up the chocolate chip ones so we made 1 dozen plain, 1 dozen with peppermint, 1 dozen with walnuts and 1 dozen with peppermint AND walnuts. Yup, they all taste just as good as they sound.
I’m thankful for the kid’s Christmas cookie decorating talents as I have no talent what so ever when it comes to frosting. I prefer the mixer part! A friend and I are getting together this week to knock out some buckeye candies and I can’t wait!
I easily ate a dozen cookies this weekend plus another pound of frosting but it was worth it. It didn’t stop our Friday Sunday date night to get out of the house for a little bit. After Little Man went down with a stomach bug on Thursday my husband had to stay home Friday night from my work Christmas party. Luckily we were able to sneak in a date Sunday night instead and spend a little time enjoying some pizza and wine.
Last year’s Holiday season was so crazy we found ourselves not enjoying much. Using the excuse that Little Man was too little and buying a house on December 18th (who does that?) we sort of skipped a lot holiday fun. With Little Man’s age this year it has more than made up for it. We had an unseasonably warm weekend here at 55-60 degrees all weekend. We decided to take advantage of it and drive around the neighborhood in our golf cart to look at all of the Christmas lights.
We are officially stuffed on Christmas cookies and looking forward to another weekend of Christmas fun next weekend with my family.
What are your favorite Christmas cookies?
Do you like to decorate or do you prefer to mix?
i LOVE sugar cookies!! my favorite christmas cookies are gingerbreads!
Do you make them with the real gingerbread dough!? We tried it one year and it did not come out at all. I need a better recipe!
So fun! I am making cookies this weekend and LOVING this weather!
I hope you enjoy your sugar cookies! This weather has been nice!
My family and I make similar cookies and they always look and taste so amazing! Can’t wait to get baking!
♡ Julia | lifeofjules.com
Julia recently posted…Blogmas Day 15: Winter Pamper Essentials + Routine
Have fun with your baking! They are my favorite of the season!
Looks like cookie day was so fun!! We love baking sugar cookies!
They are the best this time of the year! The kids love them.
Kids and cookies. Sprinkles everywhere! We did our cookie decorating this past weekend.
Sarah recently posted…Choco-Banana Minion Whoopie Pies
The mess is completely worth it! I hope you had fun!
Lovely cookies! The most wonderful ones are the Christmas Trees xx
MakeUp Fun recently posted…3 Ultimate Pre-Christmas Cleanses
Haha I won’t lie, those were decorated by an adult, but they are still really fun!
These look so yummy! Always a fun project to make some cookies. I can’t wait to make ours. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Cassie recently posted…20 Free Things to do to Make You Happy
It is really fun and the kids love it. A wonderful tradition!
So cute! I love decorating cookies- but 3 dozen!? That’s so many!! I’m sure the kids loved the seemingly never ending pile of cookies they got to decorate 🙂
http://katelynmcphee.blogspot.ca
I think in the end between all of the different types of cookies we made close to 18 dozen! About half were sugar cookies. It was CRAZY!
That’s a fun tradition! I do something similar with my mom and sisters. We call it Sugar Plum Saturday. Unfortunately, due to travel and illness, we weren’t able to coordinate schedules this year!
Stefanie (@LexieLooDylan2) recently posted…Dear Santa
Oh no! We had that problem a few years ago and wound up making Christmas cookies in January. I hope you get a chance to bake together soon!
These make me want to start baking the holiday treats! Look so good!
You should! They are so much fun to make.
Looks like you had a blast making these! They’re so cute and festive, I hope they’re as good as they are cute!
They were delicious!
Love sugar cookies and there’s no holiday without them 🙂 These look super cute n colorful.
Molly Kumar recently posted…Sweet n Spicy Meatballs with Cranberries
They were so fun to make!
[…] you that I really can’t believe next week is Christmas. Yes, we have been having a lot of holiday fun and shopping for ugly Christmas sweaters, but it still amazes me how quickly it has come. Can time […]
These all look delicious, and what a fun day!
xx katie // a touch of teal
It was so much fun!
I really like baking peanut butter cookies, but that is mainly because I get spoonfuls of peanut butter. 😉
Julia @ Lord Still Loves Me recently posted…Winter Food Recipe Roundup (Link Love!)
Hahaha I completely understand! I do the same!
[…] countdown is on. Santa is getting his sleigh warmed up and turning on the heated seats. The cookies are baked, the exact schedule for the weeks is set, the ugly sweaters are ironed and laid out, the presents […]