Cookies Anyone?

 The Keebler elves have nothing on us at holiday time!  My wife made just shy of 50 dozen cookies today.  Yes.  You read that correctly!  About 12 dozen were sugar cookies.  After supper (which was take out due to the baking focus) we assembled the troops and began Operation Decoration.  Above, the troops are ready to begin work.

 The amount of sprinkles to be chosen from in our house is staggering.  Here they are perused carefully so that just the right selection can be made.

 A few of the finished tasty edible art.

And a close up for your enjoyment.  It was so much fun.  No one got super hyped or ramped up.  I put on a CD of instrumental holiday music and I think it kept the mood festive but calm.  This is important for Lissa as she has a hard time getting calm again if she gets super excited.  An hour or two before bedtime is not the time I want out of control excitement.  Also, the kids were careful in their decorating. There was no racing. They really took time to choose their sprinkles.  And they used them in some unusual ways.  Tombstones meant for Halloween made awesome buttons on the snow people.  They really looked like rocks or lumps of coal. I would never have thought of that.  Halloween sprinkles are for halloween, right?  Rob figured out some beautiful ways to make red striped effects with sprinkles on the candy cane shaped cookies.  Lissa decided white sprinkles on the trees looked like snow.  And would you believe 40 minutes got 12 dozen cookies decorated?  I had put a bath towel across the side of the island where we were decorating and it made clean up a snap.  I could just wrap up the spilled sprinkles in the towel and shake them into the sink and throw the towel in the wash.  No scrubbing and virtually nothing on the floor!

The other cookies you ask?  Well there are some old standards. Chocolate chip, reverse chocolate chip and peanut butter.  The first two we had made the dough a few weeks ago and frozen in dough balls which also sped things up considerably today.  My wife also felt more adventurous this year and was willing to try some new recipes.  This gladdened my little heart as while I like to have some familiar things and respect that need for tradition, I just really love trying new recipes. To that end we  tried a recipe for Mexican Wedding Cookies, a short bread cookie and Pioneer Woman's cherry cookies. 

We give cookies to lots of people obviously.  Some people really look forward to us showing up with their annual tin of cookies.  Our florist even gave us tins they didn't use one year, saying that would help ensure that they would keep getting cookies! LOL  Our mechanic looks forward as well as the local printer.  We give cookies to our neighbors, and the mailman. We have to give extra to the dentist because he hides them from his staff for his personal enjoyment. So he gets his own tin and there is another tin for the rest of the crew!  This year KC wants to send cookies to his art teacher and Lissa wants to bring some to her gymnastics coach. 

The year we brought Lissa home was the only year cookies didn't get out to anyone. They were all made but the call came unexpectedly  telling us to get to Chicago and we literally just packed and went.  Cookies were sad stale memories of their former selves when we got home nearly a week later.  People begged us to give them cookies at Valentines Day that year because they didn't get them at Yule!

I love giving a food gift. Well anything homemade really. As it is truly from the heart and giving from the heart is the most important part to me.  Our kids always get a home made gift from us at Christmas each  year. This  year they will be microwavable bedwarmers that I read about on someone's blog. (I wish I remember who as then I would link and credit.)

I also love the fact that the cookies are all getting delivered tomorrow. Because if they were not, I would likely be 5000 pounds come Christmas!