Practical Perfection: Christmas Parties

Wednesday last week was the culmination of days of baking and weeks of planning in a massive amount of Christmas parties! I baked close to ten dozen cookies (and decorated them all) and missed Small Fry's Christmas concert (no worries I went last year and the parents went this year) so I could decorated a gingerbread house for my mom's office dessert competition!

Did I mention they were all on the same day?

Did I also mention that I'm a perfectionist and no one else can touch my cookies?!

Yes well.

Here are all the gingerbread men. Dad needed six sets of six for his office cookie exchange and I needed some for my office Christmas party.

At this stage I had made the dough, cut out the cookies, made the frosting, and outlined the cookies. I also added a cute little scarf. Then I just had to fill in the cookies with their respective frostings. Have I mentioned how much I appreciate having an outlined cookie to decorate? It's a pain in the buttocks but I can fill that cookie full of tons of icing and it doesn't cascade off the cookie like a waterfall! So not only do you get a thicker layer of frosting, you also get a pretty cookie ;)

Here's the beginning of the gingerbread house. I've never made a gingerbread house before so let's just say I used A LOT of frosting to "decorate" (cover my mistakes). Here I've cut out the walls and the steeple and the front is cooling and waiting to be cut out. I cut the shapes after the cookie had baked because that meant straighter and flatter edges.

Here are the sugar cookies! Not outlined our decorated. I'm slacking I'll admit it.

Alright, here the sugar cookies, or should I say santa cookies, are halfway decorated. Squeeze bottles are SOOOO much less messy than using a spoon for frosting btw. And they're super cheap at craft stores.

Oh and don't you just love my nativity?! It's my favorite because the emotion Mary is showing is so realistic to new moms :) It makes me realize that even though the Holy Family was pretty much the holiest family ever they were still human and the love of a mother for her new baby and the love of a father for his wife and new baby is universal.

And now . . . THE BIG REVEAL!

Days upon DAYS of frosting coolies till my hands cramped have finally paid off!

Here are the finished products :)

The santa cookies!

Aren't they just adorable?! Is santa supposed to be adorable?
(I used the same hard frosting I used to outline the cookie to make the texture in the hat. Just start squeezing and plopping frosting all over to make it look 3-D).

Now the gingerbread men!

I used a powdered sugar and water icing for the brown body because that makes the cookie the softest and then used the harder meringue frosting for the red and green scarves. They were delicious!

And the piece de resistance!
My gingerbread spanish church! (mom's office theme was a Southwestern Christmas)

I totally blew the competition away to win best themed cake! (there was cake inside holding up the walls . . . don't tell).

I also don't think many people entered/took it too seriously . . . but it was a competition and I had and idea and by golly I was gonna try and make the best possible entry!