Christmas baking

I don't really know what we were thinking. Between us, Heather and I have five, I repeat, five boys. And yet we felt up to the challenge of tackling a boat load of Christmas baking. It didn't start off that badly at all. The sugar cookies were a snap. Three kids outside and two inside made for a pleasant morning. There was no whining from the kids and no whining from Heather and I. It was fun.

We had lunch and then started on the pepper nuts. They were fun - make little snakes out of the dough and then chop them up. With both of us working at it, it didn't even take too long. I only got in trouble once from Kyle (Heather's youngest). Little mister Kyle really liked the pepper nuts. I tried taking them away and he looked at me and said, "Carmen! No!" with attitude only a two year old can give.

The final cookie of the day were spritz cookies. I was so excited to use my cookie press for the first time. As you may notice from the picture above, my cookie press wasn't exactly successful. After much frustration, Heather finally got her cookie press out. By this time, neither of us were feeling that optimistic and for good reason. Apparantly good ol' Martha (Stewart, that is) had steered us wrong in the flour department. We finally ended up pressing it into pans and cooking as is. The best thing, though, about baking with your best friend is that instead of slamming cupboard doors and sniping at the kids like I would at home by myself, we laughed our heads off over the whole fiasco. I sure am glad I moved close to home again.