the Spirit of Christmas

This year at Christmas is not the best of times. It is a little stressful, what with my new job venture not working out and me looking for a job at my age, but we'll get through it. I had been thinking about the season and that it is better to give than receive, because no matter how difficult it might be financially, there are always others worse off.

Tyler should learn about giving this year. That is what I told myself. Most of our neighbors are elderly. Then I got another one of the millions of emails about Christmas cookies and a lightbulb went on over my head.

Let me tell you that I have never made sugar cookies from scratch. Chocolate is more my thing, but Alton Brown's recipe seemed like a no fail plan for us, so I made a double batch.

Having made 2 trips to Joanns this week in between rain storms (EVERYTHING for Christmas is 70% off!!! more on that in another post) Tyler picked out a gingerbread man cookie cutter and big can of various red and green sprinkles, so the plan seemed made to order. We jumped in. Here we are rolling out the dough. We learned that it doesn't roll well right out of the frig, and not well after it gets too warm. And it requires a LOT of powdered sugar to keep it from sticking to everything.

Tyler loves learning about anything and everything. He wants to help all the time, even with sweeping and mopping, so he was very excited to use his new cookie cutter and the rolling pin. I was excited to get out my long neglected copper cookie cutters! 

Look at that effort!

This was a great crafty project to do with an almost 3 year old. The breaks we needed for baking and cooling of cookies allowed him to go play and then refocus. By the time we got to icing and decorating, he was still totally excited about it thanks to Claymation Christmas  (we have the whole dvd - a favorite)  and the Backyardigans.

Tomorrow should be a great day to walk down our little street and make gifts of cookies to the neighbors.

Hey, they might even want to leave these out for Santa!