Our holiday baking

We have been making tons of sugar cookies. Emma had her Christmas party at school on Friday where we brought 2 dozen frosted sugar cookies. Then we brought 3 more dozen to the Christmas party on Saturday night. They went so fast we didn't even get one!

These are Emma's best friends at school: Raeleigh & Briley. They are very nice girls. We are so glad they are in Emma's class!
The girls LOVED decorating cookies! This was the 2nd day doing it. Instead of decorating the tree (which they had fun doing), they begged to decorate cookies again. We had them decorate the tree first. Then they spent a few HOURS decorating cookies. They can't wait to make cookies again on Christmas Eve for themselves and Santa.
I think the key to them (and me) enjoying it more this year is contributed to using these bottles. They weren't nearly as messy as those yucky bags that drip everywhere(and make it very hard for kids to hold and squeeze at the same time). So I prepared these the night before. I was disappointed when I got them because the hole to put the frosting in is SO small...too small to spoon the frosting in. (I got these at Michaels - 18/$7.00 with 40% off coupon). I wish I could have found some short fat ones with a really big opening and a small tip on them. But, I got a pretty good system going of transferring the frosting to ziplocks and then squeezing it in the bottles.

It made it easy for them to squeeze (right into their mouth) - " EMMA!"
but more importantly to decorate the cookies with less frustration. Lily did a great job! All of hers turned out GREAT-- when we were done with all of the cookies it wasn't even noticable who did which cookies! She was a little frustrated that she didn't execute as many as us, but she had a great time and was proud of her cookies.

Emma working on hers..
and Lily working on hers..





All of these cookies I made as x-mas trees. Emma got sick of x-mas trees, so the last 1/2 dozen she got a little more creative making airplanes, a "cookie" with a rolling pin
and I believe this was a mouse with glasses ?