Heart-bakers

This is Liam.

He and his mama had us over to make, bake and ice cookies for Valentine's Day. It was very hands-on for the kiddos. They got to, with a little help, measure, mix, roll, cut and decorate...oh, yeah, and EAT cookies. Besides being a morning loaded with fun, the cookies came out SUPER TASTY! Lora, I NEED that recipe :)

I'm picking the following shot as my Best Shot because I love this little girl, her eyelashes, her pigtails and her ability to want to try and do everything. She wants to be elbows deep in cookie dough....and life.

for more delish best shots, hit Tracey's

Cookie Family

I've been wanting to post about these cookies for a couple of weeks...now that everyone has their cookies, I can! It all started when Daryl, Mia and I sat down to ice some gingerbread cookies. They started out like random gingerbread men...then Daryl made one with a UT shirt on...I made one of Daryl...in the end, every family member got a cookie of themselves for Christmas :)

Daryl posing with the cookie I'd iced in his image

Mia HAD to show off her cookie just like Daddy did
Mia quite intent on icing a cookie that she'd already sampled!

(from top left) Daryl with UT shirt and Blackberry in hand, Me with camera, Mia with kitty cat

(from bottom left) Pawpaw with is Ron Paul shirt on, Nana with her glass of red wine, Joe in suit and holding his blackberry, Melissa with a book in hand (I added a set of knitting needles and scarf later), Gwen with messy hands from painting :) (I'd also made one of Memaw, but it didn't make the photo shoot)

Mike the fisherman, Tia Mae who's pregnant, and Ita with her beloved dog, Max even our sweet Ms. Andrea from Casa T got a cookie with an Om symbol on her shirt, a paintbrush and painting

Holiday Cookies 2008 (aka Sprinkle Time!)

Mia and I baked up some holiday cookies...regular sugar cookies in the shapes of candy canes and trees then some gingerbread men. Mixing, rolling, cutting out and baking the dough was fun...so I thought. Then came the SPRINKLES!!!!

I'm not sure when the last time was that we had that much fun! Mia's sprinkle theory: icing, sprinkles for me, sprinkles for cookie, sprinkles for me...eat cookie!

In the time it took Mia to decorate one cookie, I did about 25! She's serious about her sprinkles. We may have to have a sprinkle intervention...scroll down to see why! What's even more hilarious was when she 'found' sprinkles on the rug and told Niles (our dog), 'NO! those are MY sprinkles!!!' and then ate a bunch more! tis the season :)

Tree Trimming & Cookie Baking

This year, Mia is a BIG help. She wants to be right in the middle of everything. She's enjoyed laying under the tree while I was putting all the lights up. Daryl topped it very nicely with our star...it's only fallen on me once. Mia was soooo cute trying to hang ornaments on the tree. Her first one, a red apple, she hung on the tippy tip of a light bulb. Then she moved on to attaching ornaments to the wires of the lights instead of the tree branches. Oh, and ALL the snowmen and to be together...like a centimeter apart! Mia's totally into my snow globe collection. She'll sit on the floor with one for a loooong time just turning it over and watching the snow slowing fall...the ones with a music box in the base are her favorites. She's only broken one...now they are up on the counter and will be moved down per her request...one at at time while supervised :)

Then we baked many many many sugar cookies in the shapes of snowflakes, candy canes and christmas trees. I'm waiting for a peaceful block of time this week to sit down with her and decorate away. She had her own little rolling pin, but I LOVED when she used mine that my mom gave to me....it's what she used while I was growing up...very sentimental.

p.s. anytime we do anything christmassy, Mia wants to wear her elf helper hat. I sometimes don my santa hat, but it's a little itchy

Catch Me if You Can...

...I'm the Gingerbread Man!

This morning was wonderfully spent at fellow O'Mama Andrea's house...this is Colton's mama, not to be confused with Andrea from Casa T & Sophia's mama :) She went ALL out! Had gingerbread man coloring pages for the kids to color, an AWESOME story time about a Gingerbread Baby that had Mia on the edge of the rug, AND homemade gingerbread dough! The kids took turns cutting out their very own gingerbread men and when they were out of the oven and cooled, they got to ice them all by themselves...the icing was a little tough, so the mamas helped out with a good squeeze. It was the BEST time, and Andrea promised that next time, the mamas could make their own cookies ;) Oh, I think she should do this EVERY year :) :) :) Can I RSVP now?

I also had a wonderful time documenting all that went on. Andrea's kitchen was full of natural light and all the kids were beyond adorable. I ended up with 85 shots or so! Here are some of my faves...the rest are on my flickr.