Christmas Cookie Ideas

Check out these Christmas cookie ideas that were created by my great-niece, Lauren, one weekend when I was visiting the States. Aren't they adorable?

I'd been serving in as a missionary in Australia for almost 20 years at that time and had only been home to the USA for Christmas once. That year I had some family obligations that brought me back for a couple of months.

One of the blessings was having the opportunity to spend some time with my sister and her family over the Christmas season. We had such a great time and made some wonderful memories.  Making Christmas cookies was just one of them!

Between the shopping, decorating, and baking, it was so much fun.

My sister, Debbie, and I made a variety of Christmas cookies.  Some recipes we made were traditional cookies like chocolate chip and shortbread, but we also did a few others that you may want to try. I'll add them as time permits.

Fun Christmas Cookie Ideas

I have to be honest, when we made these easy Christmas cookies this weekend, we cheated a bit! We didn't work from scratch.

Debbie has only one granddaughter, Lauren (my great-niece). She made plans to pick her up from school and have grandma/granddaughter time making Christmas cookies. I got to horn in on the fun since I was staying with Debbie - lucky me!

Because of time restraints, we opted for the pre-packaged cookie mixes that you can pick up these days at the grocery store. We made a batch of both sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies.

Okay, okay, they are definitely not as tasty as homemade, but we were more interested in the fun of baking and decorating than the absolute homemade taste quality. They were perfect on that score!

We made up a batch of royal icing for the white frosting and then just used the pre-made cookie icing that you can buy in those frosting bags with the tips for the other colors, along with colored sugar, colored jimmies, and various other "edible decor" sprinkles.

As you can see, Lauren was enjoying herself immensely as she unleashed her creativity. She made a gingerbread man representing each of her family members and then a reindeer to represent the family pets. :)

We also ended up making decorated sugar cookies shaped like Christmas trees, wreaths, snowmen, candy canes, stars, and more. Just look at some of these cute cookies!

By the time we were done baking and decorating (and doing a fair bit of taste testing along the way), Lauren and I were both sugared up and engaged in an epic towel fight battle.

Of course, as I promised her, age and experience won out and I had her thoroughly defeated and rolling on the floor with laughter.

All in all, it made for some wonderful Christmas memories for me, and hopefully for Lauren, too.  She's now grown up and a beautiful young lady.  I'm pretty certain she still takes time to make Christmas cookies with Grandma each year.

Feel free to share your own Christmas cookie ideas and stories.

Merry Christmas!

Blessings,
         Angie