Christmas, Crafts, & Cookies

Only a couple months late. Here's another catch up post:

Sometime before Christmas the Relief Society in my ward had a Christmas craft night with dinner. It was really fun and delicious! I haven't done anything crafty in awhile due to our living situation, so I really enjoyed it.

You could only pick two things to do (they had about ten options), so I picked things where you just show up and they provide everything for you instead of having to bring something. The less work the better!

^ These two shadow box frames were really cute, but I didn't make them. They were part of the crafts where you had to bring something with you. I just took pictures for my own future reference. The one on the left would be a cute Christmas decoration. The frame on the right would be cute on a kitchen.

^ This was a frame I made (not the actual frame, it's from IKEA). All we did was spray glued a piece of burlap to the plexiglass that came with the frame and then you could hot glue the clip on the front. I couldn't decide if I wanted to permenantly have my frame be vertical or horizontal sooo...

...I bought magnets at Walmart (the clip was already a magnet) and then depending on if I want it to be vertical or horizontal I can change it. I liked the idea of clipping a recipe up when you're cooking or changing out different photos or whatever else you can think to clip on there.

^ The pic on the left is of the clear plastic ornaments that I made (again, I didn't make the actual ornaments). I did wrap strips of Christmas paper around a pencil and then packed the coils through the top of the ornament. Those are actually our first Christmas ornaments.  On the right are the Christmas cookies I made. They're actually called Candy Cane Cookies, but my visiting teachers had given me a little Christmas gift and one of the things with it was a snowman cookie cutter so I thought I'd use it with the dough (the consistency is similar to sugar cookie dough).

candy cane cookies

preheat oven to 375 degrees.

mix together:
1 cup butter or shortening
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla

then add:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt

at this point you can divide the dough in two and put red food coloring in one of the doughs.  roll out some dough from the white and from the red like worms. twist them around each other and curve the top so it looks like a candy can.

bake about 8-9 minutes.

when cookies are still warm sprinkle with mixture of 1/4 cup crushed peppermint candy cane and 1/4 cup sugar.



*side note: My husband said I should've put frosting on them. He can make them next time.