one batch too many

21 cups of flour, 18 eggs abeating, 9 cups of sugar, 6 cups of butter, 3 batches of sugar cookies.... and a table full of caallloorrieessss..... (sing to the tune of Partridge in a Pear Tree....)

It ended like this....

A long, folding table AND a card table.... covered with decorated sugar cookies.... I suspect you could have gotten a sugar high just looking at all of the cookies. Big ones. Small ones. Christmas trees. Stockings. Stars. Mittens. Ornaments.


It started like this....

First one batch of sugar cookie, then a second. Two batches is a norm for us. It gives every one enough cookies to take home and enjoy, plus enough to give away to family, friends, and co-workers. But as they laid there, stacked one on top of another.... it just didn't look like enough.... I bought some new cookie cutters this year and they were on the large size, so it's possible they used up more cookie dough, and we may not have enough... So two batches became three batches of sugar cookies....

Now, looking at these pictures of undecorated cookies, you have to agree that it doesn't look like all that many.... and this is three batches! So you see my dilemma! But I digress....

Somewhere in the middle of all this, came the decorating....

Decorating sugar cookies is an annual event for my daughter and I. We make them twice a year--Christmas and Easter. My son's significant other and other extended family members usually join us. This year my ex-husband's wife also came. Technically, she's the kid's step-mom, so that makes her family, right?

Baking and decorating cookies is usually an all-day event. It was also a huge mess, trying to roll out dough and decorate at the same time. HUGE mess. Now, I do the baking one day so when we all get together, we only have to decorate. It's so much more fun and much less hassle.

The details....

We use only the best, the finest, the most expensive professional decorating tools we can find. Toothpicks. Skewers. Paintbrushes. Cheese spreading knives. Baby spoons. They seem to work just fine.....

Here's Michelle and Tracy busy decorating. Only 239 more cookies to go! We try to make each cookie unique... paying attention to details that will make it so.... At least for the first few dozen. As the morning ticks on, the icing gets slapped on a little quicker, cookies tend to be a little messier (at least on my part), and details.... well, the snow man with the black top hat, the orange nose, and red scarf flowing in the wind.... is now a white snowman!

But we have fun. It's one of our family traditions that I look forward to every season. Spending time with my daughter, making memories, is important to me. And having Michelle join us (in the blue), makes it even more special because one day she could truly be a part of our family in the legal sense (she already has our heart).

Here's some of my favorite cookies. New to my stash this year is the snow globe! Isn't it cute? And the stocking was also a fun one to decorate.