Christmas Cookies 2011

Why add the year to the title of this post? Because it has become a fabulous annual tradition, that's why. And when my kids are in their 30's are they are being forced begging to read posts about their childhood, I want to have the years straight.

Here's last years post in case any of you are really bored or just have a lot of time on your hands.
http://www.theredwebs.blogspot.com/2010/12/obligatory-christmas-traditions.html

So on to cookiepalooza 2011. First we rolled out the dough. It was homemade, but store bought is just as good. I'm just a nerd who is weird about always baking from scratch. I know I'll get over it one of these days.

Then we just grabbed everything we could out of our pantry.

  The kids were so excited to pick out their favorite cookie cutters and go to town.

 We mixed egg yolks with food coloring so we could paint the raw dough.

 And you can use the egg whites to paint the dough as well. This is great for holding sprinkles and other goodies.

  The kids (both big and small) had fun painting their masterpieces.

 Voila! Using egg whites really helps it to stick.

 And the egg yolk with food coloring is fun for painting as well.

  Batch 1 is ready to go in the oven.

 So then we decorate some cooked ones that I had already made for the kids. I normally make my own frosting, but we had already used it all up when we had some friends over earlier in the month to make cookies. This worked just as well.

 Not making as much of a mess as I had anticipated. I have some serious decorators on my hands.

Dancing with Daddy is a great way to pass the time while we wait for the cookies to come out of the oven.

 We set some aside for Santa....

....and the rest are left just for us. Bon appetit.