Christmas Cookie Insanity

Every year, as far back as I can remember, my mom and I have made the same Christmas cookies. They are a rich butter cookie that we roll out, cut into shapes, and then decorate. We started out with just three colors of icing as decoration, but each year we seem to add on, making them more elaborate. It is a 2 day process (and really should be three). On day one this year, we made the dough, let it chill for a few hours, and then rolled, cut, and baked them. Day two started at 10am with us making the icings and glazes, and we didn't finish until 12 hours later at 10pm!! We did take breaks for lunch and dinner, and at 8pm watched So You Think You Can Dance, but ran back to decorate at each commercial break. By the end of the day we both had aching backs, sore fingers, and were sick of cookies! I do love this tradition of ours, and look forward to it each year. This year we made 8 batches. I like to give them away as gifts for my co-workers, and my mom likes to give some to her friends. The recipe says each batch makes 60 cookies, so that means between the two of us we decorated about 480! In years past, my grandma, brother, and dad have helped us, but my grandma is no longer with us, and my brother was down in Quantico this year. My dad did decorate 2 cookies- we always make fun of his because they are so ugly!

For some reason I am having a really hard time getting the pictures up. Stay tuned for those (hopefully...)