Christmas cheer

This year my sister Paige, who usually brings all the traditional goodies to our Christmas Eve celebration is with her family in beautiful Hawaii for Christmas. So, I stepped it up a notch and did a ton of baking. It sure helped being 'stuck' at home due to the snow, with lots of time on my hands.

This is pretty much the only Santa thing we do with the kids. I made these Santa cookies with my mom growing up, and they are a fun family tradition.

You buy (or make your own) sugar cookie dough in the roll. Since I had lots of time on my hands I made the dough and rolled it up in wax paper and put it in the freezer til I was ready to use it. When you are ready to make your Santa's you slice it. Each Santa takes two circles. One for the head and the other makes up the whiskers and hat. You cut the sides off the circle, angled in a little, to form one triangle and two sort of semi-circle wedges. I should have taken pictures since I'm not sure that makes sense.

But anyway, then you put his triangle hat on his head and place the semi-circle whisker wedges down on his face. Bake at 350 for about 8-9 minutes and cool. Have fun decorating. I use chocolate chips for eyes and frost the hat and whiskers white. We used heart shaped candies for the lips, but you could do red gel frosting.

Be creative!

We also carried on the gingerbread house tradition. Wyatt made one at his one day of school last week, but it was falling apart when he brought it home. So we used the milk carton from his house and "re-constructed" it. Extreme Home makeover would be proud. Above is the completed house with a sled, snowman, mushroom patch, flower patch, and slide. Very fun!!

All three working together was a little interesting.....but we managed.

Merry Christmas!!