Christmas Cookies!

Weston had been eagerly awaiting the day we were to make our Christmas cookies. As you can see it was quite the project (especially for me)! Although it's a lot of work, I know the kids will treasure these Christmas memories.

Here we're wrapping up the rolling, cutting, and baking .

Grace loved the messy flour part. After this photo I went into the kitchen to make the frosting and Grace stayed on the chair playing with the leftover pile of flour for 10 minutes (she also loves to make a mess with her food; a bad habit I'm trying to discontinue ;)

Decorating! The kids loved creating their own cookie artwork.

Grace probably ate cookies and licked frosting off her fingers more than she decorated!

The perfect team! I frosted them and then Grace ate them!

Still going! This was very serious and hard work!

Apparently frosting is fun to squish between your fingers.

Weston's green Christmas tree with lots and lots of green sprinkles.

The finished product! We took these plates over to Dave and Julie next door. Don't tell them about the "licking the fingers" part of the process ;)

Santa's Vanilla Cookies

Makes about 2 dozen

2 C flour

3/4 C sugar

1/2 C margarine (softened)

2 tsp. vanilla

1 T water

1 egg

Mix wet ingredients and sugar. Add dry ingredients. Mix well. Requires lots of flour for rolling and cutting out. Roll dough NO THINNER than 1/4". If you roll it too thin the cookies end up dry and crunchy. Roll thick and they are moist and chewy! Bake at 400 degrees for 5-6 minutes.

The frosting is a basic powdered sugar recipe.

About 3-4 (or more) C powdered sugar, 1-2 T butter or margarine, 1 tsp. vanilla, and about 1-2 T milk. A alternately add powdered sugar and milk until I get the right consistency (it has to be pretty thick to not run off the cookie).