Christmas Cookies

I was hoping to do Gingerbread Houses again this year with girls from school but couldn't find the graham crackers this year.  So we made cookies instead.....  What a night!  

Here's a recipe for a fun evening: Needed: 

• 14 girls (2 adults - more if you want to keep your sanity :) )

• 3 recipes of sugar cookie cutouts (15 total cups of flour)

• 1 ppt with pictures from the internet of Christmas cookies in America (most have no concept of Christmas cookies. )

• 1 lesson on how to roll out and cut sugar cookies  (see picture...do I feel a career change to home-ec coming up????  jk - not really, biology is too much fun! :) )
• 3 rolling pins of our own, 2 borrowed from the neighbors. 

• a few flour fights (see picture at the top)

• a LOT of cookies sheets (some also borrowed from neighbors)

• Two ovens in which to make the WAY more than anticipated cookies - oops. :) :)   Again - our neighbors are great to answer the call in the middle of chaos! :) 

• Number of cookie trays baked - about 17 or 18 - we lost track....  In this picture there are two in the oven, two in the neighbors oven and well, you can see the ones on the counter - that's not all of them and some were already baked...  :) 

• three batches of icing and an hour decorating the cookies.  The girls don't believe in simply decorating things...every cookie is a masterpiece. 

• 1 large mess 

• countless fun memories. :) 

• The number of cookies left at our house after it was all over - 2
• The time I kicked them out to go home because both them and us were exhausted - 10:00pm

Favorite quote of the evening, "Ms. Forney, do people do this a lot in America?  I mean this is a lot of work."  

No kidding! haha  I explained that people usually don't spend 5 minutes decorating each cookie and it goes a little faster but that yes, this was a big reason why this was a Christmas tradition and not often done. 

It was totally worth it - I really enjoyed the evening and am MOST grateful to my roommate Dani Beth for all her help. :)