Cookie Christmas Tree

Since the kids were out of school for the week before Christmas, I knew this project would be a fun one for all of us instead of a headache just for me.

Robbie rolling out the dough

We have a cookie tree kit that came with ten different sizes of stars.  You cut out 2 of each size.  Let me tell you , those big stars are hard to come up in one piece.  Well actually, they didn't haha!  We had to piece them back together on the baking sheet.  But they healed beautifully in the oven .

I normally use buttercream icing on this but I really love the powdered sugar icing for sugar cookies so we went with that instead and I'm so glad, it was delicious!  Start with the biggest cookie, ice it, set it on the platter with a dollop of icing under it to keep it from sliding.  I use a cake board covered in Christmas tissue paper.  

Next is the other star the same size.  Ice it and set it where it lays with its points between the points of the other star.  Follow this pattern all the way to the smallest star.  Save one of the smallest stars for the tree-top star.  This icing hardens faster than the buttercream icing so we had to put sprinkles on it as we went up.  Rich said the guys from work loved it and was even taking pictures of it.  One of them even texted me to thank me and said it was beautiful and tasted great.

Amariah self appointed herself as the photographer.  She had to see how many neat angles of the cookie tree she could get.  

I really like this angle a lot.  It makes the cookies look so thick but airy and oh so delicious!

We had a most wonderful Christmas surrounded by lots of love, family, and laughter.  I'll leave you with this picture of Rich's grandma Soudry and little Robbie.  Frances is a 97 year old full blooded Italian that came to the US from Italy many years ago.  She is definitely a feisty one, but also a real sweetheart.

I'm grateful that my family was able to celebrate the birth of Jesus together.  I'm so glad that God brought us all together and allows us to have great relationships... where we look forward to spending time together... where we can laugh at ourselves yet still feel good about ourselves... where we feel like we belong... because we do.