The Aftermath

Hello!  I hope you and yours had a lovely Christmas!  We sure did!  And now that the flour and powdered sugar have settled, and the mess is (almost) cleaned up, here is a little recap of our days leading up to Christmas.

First I decorated some more sugar cookies.  I copied the "Joy" idea from Sweet Sugar Belle , but hers were much better.  I forgot to decorate the letters.  And I was in a hurry.  I may have mentioned I went for simple this year?  It was because I needed to decorate a LOT of cookies, fast.

So anyway, those were terrible.  I changed up the snowmen after the first run.  However, I made the change after I had already piped on the little hats.  I decided to do stick arms instead of snow arms.  But after I piped the modified body outlines for the snowmen with stick arms, I realized the hats were now waaaaay too big.  *sigh*  I'd be dangerous if I planned ahead.

I almost forgot the gingerbread men.  I used Glorious Treats' gingerbread recipe .  Um, yum!  I have now found my new go-to gingerbread cookie recipe.  Thanks, Glory!

Here we are: Classic Gingerbread Men!

And my favorite, the Very Angry Gingerbread Men!

They totally make me giggle.  The Boy wanted to take them to school for his Christmas party.  He was very particular about their faces.  He wanted them to be looking straight ahead, not at the bite marks, as I usually make them.  He wanted them to have angry eyebrows.  And the mouths had to be straight, not curved down and frowny.  What can I say, the boy knows what he wants.

Anywho, after the cookies were dry, it was time to make the gift "baskets".  My BIL found some glass terrariums at Michael's, and thought they should be filled with cookies.  I agreed, so after work on the Thursday (OK, technically it was REALLY early Friday) before Christmas, I came home from work, bagged the cookies and filled the jars.

Here is a picture of my kitchen table at approximately 2:00a.m. (It's not as bad as it sounds...I work evenings, so I keep odd hours.)

At about 3:30a.m.: order from chaos.

And on to filling!  This was the easy part.  A mini pumpkin bread went in the middle, surrounded by drop and filled cookies.

Next, iced sugar cookies and gingerbread/ninjabread men were stacked, facing out.

And the whole she-bang was topped off with the candy and the bar cookies.

All the way to the top.  Mmmmm...cookies...

I thought they came out kind of cute.

And I tied ribbon around the top and called it a day.  This was around 4:30a.m. 

Later that morning, BIL and hubby drove around town and delivered them to whomever was getting one.  One of these days I'm going to start selling these. 

So, again, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!  And as the holiday season winds down, please keep in mind the greatest gift of all:

Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

--CookieD-oh