White Christmas Cookies

Wow! It has been quite a while since I posted anything here. 2015 has been a whirlwind year for me and my cookie decorating has taken a backseat. Decorating cookies proved to be a very productive form of grief therapy for me and helped me be able to live life again this year. My father died back in 2012 and I quickly spiraled down into a deep pit of grief and depression. It was in January 2013 that I made my first attempt at decorating cookies and became hooked after that. I am glad I had an art form on which to focus during that time, although I will admit that I did use it as a crutch to fool myself into believing I was being productive and therefore nothing was really wrong. It did give me the opportunity to make a little money for a couple of years, and for that I am grateful. However, this year, I have had a glorious emergence from my personal pit of despair and find myself out living life, rather than hiding behind my computer screen or occupying my time with a piping bag in my hand. This year I have eliminated dairy, sugar and gluten from my diet and am feeling like a new person. My anxiety and depression are gone!! I am able to soundly sleep because I am no longer snoring and therefore awake well rested and ready to go each day. And as a wonderful added benefit, I am wearing clothes this backside hasn't dreamed of being in within the last 10 years. I am feeling good inside and out! My grandmother died in October at age 89 and while I was upset, I was able to deal (still dealing) with it much better than the death of my father and have not completely shut down and isolated myself. At least I learned some things during that first go around! Things leading up to her death took up a lot of my time (thankful that I had the extra time in my schedule to be with her) that I might have otherwise worked on cookies and I have/had also been training for my first 5K, which I excitedly completed on December 5th! Have another scheduled for January 23, 2016, so I am still training, just not as heavily as for the first because of all of the holiday activities going on. Anyhow, enough about me, let's get to my latest cookies!!

What with the balmy mid- 70's temps we're having, I figured the only way I could have a White Christmas was to make one! Actually, I was just lazy and didn't feel like mixing icing colors but the result was stunning! I have essentially put myself on a "no more buying cookie cutters" restriction, but when I ran across the set containing this reindeer marked down at Marshall's, I HAD to have it. I am so glad I got him because he's just so cute! That's my standard favorite Wilton triangle Christmas tree and the large snowflake from their muli-pack of snowflakes.

White Christmas Cookies

I did actually mix color one evening for cookie decorating with a friend's grandchildren, which I will get to in another post, and had some left over so I did a few trees in colors for this set that I gave to some friends who love my cookies at their annual Christmas Eve Celebration.

White Christmas with colored trees cookies

 

Thank you 2015 for being such a great year of awakening for me!! Here's hoping 2016 deals me more of the same!

Decorating Cookies with Kids

Holy cow!!! That's the only way I can truly describe decorating cookies with children. My perfectionism had to be left at the front door of my friend Beverly's house where I went to decorate cookies with her three grandchildren last weekend. I laid out about 8 various cookies on a work tray covered in wax paper for each child. There were two boys and one girl. I expected differences in the older two (boy/girl twins) and their younger cousin, but the biggest difference that never occurred to me was how differently the boys approached it than did little Maggie. Maggie was meticulous with her designs and execution (and sneaking mouthfuls of icing), but the boys, while interested in what they were doing, just jumped straight into each cookie as a whole made it up as they went along. The young Cam LOVED sprinkles... A LOT! We realized after his first time using them alone, that he needed to be supervised with any sprinkles! It really was a fun evening and I think we all had a good time making Christmas cookies.  Here are some pics from the evening.

Decorating Cookies With Kids

Decorating Cookies With Kids