Christmas Cookie vs. the Sprinkle Bomb

You know the tradition right? Baking cookies for Santa? Well, for someone who REALLY hates messes, this simple tradition is very difficult for me. I try to take deep breaths! I try not to think about an entire bottle of sprinkles being dumped on one cookie. I try not to think about the gooey frosting wiped all over the counter, under the counter, and on everyone's clothes. I try not to think about frosting/sprinkle/cookie crumb mess all over the kitchen floor. I try not to think about the clean up afterwards.

I can't say I'm successful, but I can say I still managed to enjoy it!

And I think they enjoyed it too.

Samuel created what I would consider to be a "sprinkle bomb". (I stole this term from another fellow blogger!)

Mmm...yummy!

If there's one way to describe Josh, it's that he "thinks outside the box". He will never do what is expected. And that includes decorating cookies. Most people when they are given a bell shaped cookie, or a Christmas tree shaped cookie, will decorate it to be a bell, or a tree. Right? Not Josh.

Josh will take that bell and tree, turn them upside down, and make Rudolph and a carrot. Last year, he turned a snowman shaped cookie into... I just love him! Never a dull day.

All in all, we had a pretty successful run! We even have our cookies set aside for Santa. Merry Christmas everyone!

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree...

7 years ago when we first put up our pre-lit tree, I thought it was the best thing EVER.  How easy!  How convenient!  No stringing the lights around and trying to make sure it was even...just perfectly spaced lights as far as the eye could see!  

The last couple years we ran into some trouble.  Big sections of lights wouldn't work, so Josh would spend some time fiddling with it.  WHEW, sigh of relief, the lights would come on.  

This year...our luck ran out.  Nothing would make those lights turn on.  So Josh decided he would simply take the pre-lit lights OFF the tree.  What's that you say?  Why didn't we just go buy a new tree?  Simple.  'Cause we're CHEAP! 

But let me tell you, 10 man hours into un-clipping what turned out to be THOUSANDS of tiny clips holding who knows how many light strands on that tree, we were cursing our frugality.  Yes, we may have saved 150 bucks, but the price of our sanity would have been worth it!

Those little tiny things on the floor are just a fraction of the clips that were all over our house by the time we were done.  That big mess of lights?  Josh thinks he's going to untangle that somehow!  Yeah...  I think I might sneak out to the garage and throw it away on trash day.  

So we're back to decorating our tree old-school style.  And I think it turned out pretty good!  

YES.  That is a baby gate around our tree.  After not putting ornaments on the bottom half of our tree for 5 years, and me losing my mind trying to keep my 3 boys from dragging the tree down on top of them every year...I got smart last year.  I picked that baby up off Craigslist and have never looked back!  Last year I tried to put some tinsel-garland around the top but it ended up looking like barbed wire.  This year, we're going with peppermint lights.