Christmas cookies are for eating!

Since I've been on maternity leave with a baby who sleeps like an angel, I've had time to do more holiday stuff with Owen than I would normally be able to do and it has been FUN! Here are pictures from two different days of decorating with icing and candy.

I checked a bunch of Christmas books out from the library and one of them was about Christmas cookies. Owen got really into the cookie idea so we made Christmas cookies together last Saturday. Owen is a very helpful, very careful baker in the kitchen. He is always asking for "Owen jobs." He scooped, poured, leveled dry ingredients, worked the stand mixer, licked the batter, rolled the dough, cut out cookies, and watched them bake in the oven. We made Christmas trees, stars, gingerbread men, cows, and pigs. On Sunday, we had our neighbors Lily and May come over to decorate with icing, sprinkles, and candy. It was fun, but there was a LOT of candy consumed in the making of these cookies. I made the rolled butter cookies and buttercream frosting recipes from "The Best Recipe" cookbook and we thought they tasted great.


Two days later I ventured up to Ikea and saw their gingerbread house kit for $4 and I couldn't resist. We still had extra icing and candy so why not? This was so much fun. The homemade buttercream frosting was totally not ideal for this project because it gets so soft when it warms up, but it served our needs just fine and it tasted awesome.

Like everything from Ikea, the house required assembly.



We started by making marshmallow snowmen and Owen wanted them to wear candy hats.


Glitter fell like rain all over this little house.




"Owen, pose with your finished house!"


And now comes the best part. I'm so glad we ate this house (not all of it!) because it was really tasty. I would definitely do this with an Ikea house again next year.




This holiday season with Owen has been so wonderful for me. I've been off work and I have been able to spend a lot of time with him doing special things like this and making paper ornaments for our tree and just generally seeing the holiday fun through his eyes. It's been very freeing for me to let go of my perfectionist engineer tendencies and remember that the important part is the process and the quality time with Owen. Building this house, throwing candy on it, and then eating it right away was the BEST!