A Little Christmas Cheer to Share

With just 3 weeks between Thanksgiving and our Christmas trip, I had to get moving on our neighbor/friend/teacher gifts and keep it simple this year. First the boys and I headed off to Sears to get a cute portrait for our card. Unfortunately the whole experience was a bust and this is literally the only shot where they're all even looking- and bizarrely Ethan is twice the size of the other 2. So that wasn't going to work. Luckily my sister taught me a little photo shop this fall so I cropped out their smiling faces, downloaded some free brushes to make ornament shapes, a tadaa! a finished card!


Here's their cute close-ups.

I think the card turned out great for a first try and super cheap since we printed them at home on coupon freebie photo paper and ink.

And it was super easy to alter the card for Ethan to take to his teachers.

And for Isaac to take to his (he just has several more teachers than Ethan).

And then of course there was the 3 days of baking, decorating, bagging, card attaching, and ribboning- but actually fun when my kids helped (most of the time) and accompanied by Christmas musid. (Plus it was like 15 degrees outside so I was happy to have the stove on for 3 days :)

These are my new favorite. Just bake your favorite chocolate chip cookies, let cook, then dip in white dipping chocolate and sprinkle with crushed candy canes. So good!

All my cookies will be those one next year- super fast and easy. Unfortunately Taylor has previously requested I make sugar cookies for the bags (the others only got made because little, okay and mine too, hands made a few too many sugar cookies disappear before they were given away). So 150 sugar cookies later I realized just how labor intense they are. Cute, and good, but labor intensive.

Friday Ethan and Isaac took their cookies to their teachers and then Friday night we spent as a family driving around the neighborhood and town ringing doorbells and giving cookies.

Priceless to see the neighbors melt when Isaac or Miles gave them cookies!