My oldest daughter and her friend wanted to enter the 4-H Christmas Cookie contest. The rules were that they had to do most of the work. We included my youngest daughter and made a day of it.

We made the dough from scratch. They each selected cookie cutters and helped cut the cookie dough. Once the cookies were baked and cooled, we made the icing. They decided on a color palette and I mixed the colors for them.

I demonstrated to them how to use a piping bag to outline the cookies and then how to flood them using squeeze bottles and toothpicks. They had a lot of fun and the cookies turned out really cute.

I had to cram them into the middle of my kitchen because my camera's flash is broken and I needed good lighting. A little cozy!

I've linked a few pics, but you can click here to view a slide show of all the fun they had.

My daughter, Kasey, won the blue ribbon! Her friend, Callie, got second place.

P.S. - Look at how clean the walls of my mixer bowl are! My DH surprised me with a new Beater Blade+. It worked GREAT for making cookies. Kept the sides clean! But since there's no oil in royal icing to act as a lubricant, it made a high pitched squeaking noise when it scraped the sides clean so I switched a regular paddle.

Great job!!! The cookies look fantastic!!

You must be sooooo proud. To follow in Mom's footsteps! My daughter is almost 15 and wants nothing to do with my hobbies (I think just to bug me!!!). I keep asking her "are you sure you don't want to decorate them with me? Or craft with me?" The only thing she does take after me for is SHOPPING!!! If I say I'm going to any store (could be to buy batteries or anything boring like that) she's there with me! You are so lucky!!!! The cookies came out great and it looks like they had a ball. Thanks for posting!

Susan

Kim,
The girls' cookies look awesome - they really did a fantastic job!
They must have been very proud as I'm sure you were, too!

Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas

Kim. Thanks for sharing!!! Takes me back to those years with my daughter (now 16). I got serious into cookie decorating when I realized how much I missed doing holiday cookies with her (and all the neighborhood kids)
You should be so proud of your little protege!

Tell her congrats! They looked great!! Me and my older 2 girls are going to be decorating a cake tomorrow night, their baby sister turned 2 so I thought it would be fun to have them be part of it

Thanks, everyone. I know they really enjoyed the experience, but I think what they enjoyed even more was the attention I gave them. Our lives are so crazy that we don't spend enough "quality" time together.

I'm lucky that they DO want to do things with me and I need to put more effort into making my time available to them. They are growing up so fast and I don't want to wake up one day and regret not spending more time with them.

I'm definitely going to look for more craft projects for us to do together. I think our next project will be making friendship bracelets from embroidery floss. That's their latest interest.

And, I have to confess, this was a lesson in patience because I'm kind of a control freak...I have "rules" for everything. My closest friend learned this when she asked me to help her make cookies for a baby shower. You can read about it in my blog Testing the Boundaries of Friendship, or Teaching a Friend How to Decorate Cookies. Since then, she loves to suggest that we get together to make cookies, just to get a laugh and a "yeah right" out of me. She knows she's always welcomed - to watch! But...I showed them what to do and I got out of the way. I did do some outlining for my youngest daughter, but I left my older daughter and her friend to their own devices. If my daughter won, I wanted her to be proud for having won based on her own efforts. And she did! She took first place! How cool is that?!

I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas! Enjoy the time with your loved ones and if you find yourself traveling, be safe.

Kim, I love your last post. Enjoy this time with your girls! Mine is now 16 and 'mom time' is not on the top of her list. I miss those days so much. And I do regret not being able to spend more time with her, I owned a very busy firm and seemed to spend so much time working. But, it was funny, as busy as I was, all the neighborhood kids always came to our house to help decorate cookies at every holiday, they loved it. That was a must in our house, as well as craft parties, etc. I was smart, when my daughter was ten I moved to a much less busy and stressful job, and I have never regretted that. You sound like a great mom, and the pictures are adorable!!

Awww...Thanks, shiney!

Oh my gosh...that looks like so much fun! Makes me want to go decorate cookies. Glad you had fun...and the girls won prizes from their hard work!

The cookies and the pictures turned out great!