National Cookie Day

When I was making my list of "silly" holidays to celebrate with Cooper, December definitely had a ton of options-- National Christmas Card Day and National Cupcake Day to name a few-- but I settled on national cookie day.  I've always loved baking Christmas cookies with my mom, so I thought it would be fun to try to make a few with Cooper this year.  

I started off the celebrating by making him an apron.  I had some extra fabric from our Christmas pajamas and thought an apron would be fun for him to have.  I followed this pattern and made it all during naptime yesterday (with time to spare)-- I made it a size up and just tied the neck a little tighter so it'll hopefully last another year or so.  He was so proud and excited when he put it on!

First up was sugar cookies.  I ended up buying a bag mix and followed the directions for cutout cookies.  Cooper helped pour...

...and stir it all up.

He also wanted to eat the dough.  I let him have a bite and he was a big fan.  So big a fan that our cookie fun almost ended right there.  He just wanted to eat it all and was mad that I wouldn't let him.

He finally calmed down enough to help me cut out a few with the cookie cutters.  He still just wanted to eat the dough, so we had to move the learning tower away from the counters a few times.  But overall, he did well stirring and cutting the cookies out with me.

Then he took a break to play a little while I put the cookies in the oven and got our next batch of peanut butter cookies started.  I had found this felt cookie baking set in the Target dollar spot (for $3) and picked it up in anticipation of today.  It has several felt cookies, bags of flour and sugar, a spoon, and an oven.  The oven has a velcro top and you can open it and put everything in, so he enjoyed doing that several times.

Then he helped me unwrap the kisses for the Peanut Butter Kiss cookies.  David has to take something to a work Christmas party tomorrow, so I told him we could make some cookies on cookie day for him and he requested Peanut Butter cookies of some type.  Cooper actually did pretty well opening the kisses and even put them in the bowl I had set aside instead of just eating them!  Then he dropped one in his tower, so he got to eat that one.  He also helped me put a few of the kisses in the cookies when they came out of the oven.

All our cookies cooling on the racks.  We took a break from cookie fun until it was snack time and then it was time to decorate and eat cookies!

I put some glaze in a squirt bottle, some frosting in a few dishes with paintbrushes, and gave Cooper a few little containers with different kinds of sprinkles.  He really just wanted to eat the cookies, but did do a little decorating.  He loved putting the sprinkles on but then just wanted to take them all off and put them back in the container before he ate the cookie.

Enjoying the fruit of his labor! :)  After cookie decorating he went straight to the bathtub to get cleaned up.

Overall it was a fun morning with my little guy.  We shared a few cookies with friends and I'm planning to put the rest in some goody bags to give to Cooper's teachers at our ESL program during our last class on Thursday.

Happy Cookie Day!