Sunday, December 06, 2009

Recipe for Happy Imperfection

Take two little girls, one creative Auntie Daphne, a batch of cookies, some frosting and random candies, and some ingenuity, and you get a perfect lesson in happy imperfection.

Witness: our beautifully decorated holiday cookies:

If I had done these myself, I would have needed to try and make them "perfect." And I would have missed the point completely. These are so exuberant and crazy; I love them.

We had a bunch of frosting leftover, so I made a small "gingerbread" house out of an empty tissue box and a cut-up cookie box, held together with snipped-up bandaids because we couldn't find any tape.
(if you're ever in a pinch for tape, bandaids work pretty good) The girls then got to decorate the house. They did such a good job working together, it was adorable.

I used to love to make gingerbread houses. FYI: cardboard works pretty great. Yes, this is Santa's disembodied head peeking out the window.


We had crazy red, green and white frosting. The house is... um, colorful.

So, if you need some distraction from holiday madness and want to witness pure joy, just grab a couple of cute kids....
...leave your need for perfection and order at the door, and have some fun.

'Tis the season, after all.

9 comments:

Rachel Cotterill said...

I taught our Brownies a bit of basic cake decorating this year. They did super-professional marzipan & sugarpaste (I was seriously impressed) and then went wild with the red & green icing. It was so much fun... your pictures bring it all back! :)

Anonymous said...

those girls are adorable and they did a great job. i love the house, especially the santa head in the window.

Theresa said...

Those cookies look good enough to eat!

D'Arcy said...

That sounds like my plan for this Saturday. Ryan is away so I plan to stay in my jammies all day with not two but THREE adorable girlicues and bake cookies. Will try to remember to take pics.

Carl V. Anderson said...

It all looks pretty yummy to me! I love it when kids decorate cookies...because often they COVER them with sprinkles, making them even more delicious!

Daphne said...

Rachel: kids + baking always equals a good time, in my book!

Tammie: even funnier is the headless Santa in the cookie pile, waiting for an unsuspecting parent to nibble upon.

Barefoot: they are! I should post the recipe, the gingerbread cookies are really delicious.

D'Arc: do take pictures! Sounds like a perfect day. Wish I could do that with you! (oh by the way, went to a symphony/chorus tonight... you sure do start thinking some strange things....)

Carl: the more sprinkles, the better!

Nicola Ries Taggart said...

Cookies are good enough to eat...we've almost eaten them all!

And, regardless of the fact that the house is made out of cardboard, I've got one 4 year old who keeps "testing" the candies right off the roof!

Stefanie said...

I have many happy memories of decorating Christmas cookies when I was a kid. The girls did a beautiful job and the house is fantastic! What a good auntie you are :)

Daphne said...

Nick: that's adorable. They could hardly resist when the house was done!

Stef: thanks! It was really fun. I love decorating cookies but it's really never as fun as it is with kids.