This weekend I hosted our third annual family cookie party.  All in all I must say it was a success….but did it go as I planned? Not really. When does it ever?!

I always envision these parties like you see on Martha Stewart. Little kids work diligently, everything goes smoothly, no messes are made….and in the end you get these lovely gourmet looking cookies! I should know better by now, but I can’t help it.

snowman

A 4 year old cousin's gourmet creation.

This year I got a little lazy….I was exhausted by the time I had just finished making the dough that I didn’t even want to think about having roll out and cut shapes. So I left the lump of dough in the fridge until the next day. I didn’t make proper icing since my dispenser thingy broke at last year’s party, and again, I was too lazy….so I bought a can of red icing with a built in dispenser. (Red=big mess, BIG mistake). Oh, and I decided to make sugar cookies this year since I had a buttload of gingerbread men leftover last year (apparently kids don’t like eating gingerbread, just playing with it). At the last minute I realized that I didn’t have any cookies for people to snack on in the meantime, so I went to the store and bought those ready made squares of chocolate chip cookie dough. (Shhh…I think they thought they were homemade! lol. Bah…who’m I kidding?)

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. After the kids were done baking and decorating we played a few games, everyone got prizes*….and then the adults had a decorating contest with more prizes. I hadn’t laughed so much with my family in a while. After the kids were gone, the rest of us stayed, had some wine, chips, cheese, and watched a movie. Lots of fun.

I decided that this would be my official Christmas present to everyone, and so I budgeted in my gift fund for this expense. (They don’t know they’ll be getting even more fattening goodness on Christmas.) So here’s what I spent…

Groceries/Supplies $32.79 (Includes icing, random supplies I was low on, two bottles of wine, and supplies for some desserts I’m making for Christmas)
2nd Grocery Run (last minute cookie dough) $6.74
Pizza $26.75

Total = $66.28

I actually didn’t realize I spent so much, but I’m not complaining. It was totally worth it, and not really that much once I think about it.

By the way, I also made these Ginger Snap cookies and they were divine!!! I’m not kidding! My BF, who does not like Gingerbread or Ginger snaps thought they were decent….so to me that means they were awesome! lol. They also got rave reviews from my aunts. The best part is that they are super easy to make. (And the dough is….[sigh]….even better than the baked cookies!)

*No money was spent on the “prizes” we gave out. My mom’s a pack rat, so when we were taking out the Christmas decorations this year we decided to go through her stuff and weed out the things we thought she should never put out on display again. We ended up finding a box of  little ornaments and trinkets in their original packaging that she had bought years ago to give out as gifts to her employees. These were what had been left over, and she had DOZENS of them. We decided to wrap a bunch of them to give out as gifts/prizes at the cookie party.