Sugar Cookies

These sugar cookies are a lot like those puffy pink sugar cookies you used to sluff school and go to the gas station for, maybe with a little Dr. Pepper :)

Your ingredients:

• 2 C. sugar (it's best if you run it through your food processor for a few minutes to get it really fine)
• 1 C. butter
• 3 eggs
• 1 C. sour cream
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 4 C. flour

Mix sugar and butter.  Add eggs, sour cream, soda, and vanilla.  Add flour; use as little flour as necessary, but add a little more if it makes the dough easier to handle.  Roll dough out in lightly floured board, cut, and bake on greased cookie sheet at 375 degrees until lightly browned (I think it is about 8 minutes, but start with 6 and go from there.)  Cookies may be decorated before baking with colored sugars if desired, or they may be frosted after baking and then decorated.  These are especially good with cream cheese frosting.  They are a not-to-sweet cookie and stay soft.

Hope you enjoy them!

Christmas Advent- Day 8: Hand and Foot Print Reindeer

 I think this was Kota's favorite project so far.

 All you need is paper, scissors,

 Glue, wiggly eyes, buttons (we were going to use red and green pom poms,

but the baby ate them

lost them

put them somewhere for safe keeping!)

 Ten chubby little fingers (the rest of the hand helps, too!)

And one adorable foot.

Trace the hands and foot.

Cut them out.

Glue them together.

Glue on the eyes and button.

Done!
Took us less than half an hour to do all five!

Christmas Advent- Day 7: Go Sledding...or not!

We were supposed to go sledding today, but apparently Frost can't count on the weather man any more than us average humans can!

Luckily, Grandma Little and Daddy had a little surprise for us!

The kids are having a BLAST!   They don't even care that they didn't get to go sledding!

And for the littles that are still afraid of going down the big slide,

Grandma got this fun, not scary slide.

After Daddy got this all set up for the kids,

He did something special for Mommy!

Yep, he and my brother got the lights up on the house!

Yay!

Christmas Advent- Day 6: Make Paper Snowflakes

Remember making paper snowflakes when you were a kid?


Were yours always squares or rectangles?

Did you always wonder how to make them look like a real snowflake?

I did!

Then I found some fun tutorials online.  It is so easy!

1.  Cut your paper into a square.
2.  Fold into a triangle (opposite corners to each other)
3.  Fold into another triangle
4.  Fold short side of triangle to the opposite side, making sure bottom still comes to a point.
5.  Cut off tail.
6.  Cut your design into the folds
7.  Unfold and enjoy!
*I had the girls draw their designs on them and then cut it for them because it was too thick for them to do on their own.

As you can probably guess, Cassy did not do this one.

I did it for her.  But she is sure proud of it!

I think that Chey's is my favorite.  It just goes to prove that even scribbles are art!

Charly's reminds me of  Christmas trees

Dakota had so much fun that she made several more the next day.  These are two of her favorites.

If you don't want the mess of all the little scraps,

check this out!

So much fun!

Christmas Advent- Day 5: Read the First Christmas Story

Day 5 fell on a Sunday.  I tried to do religious things on Sunday.  So this time we read

We spent almost an hour reading the story, asking the girls questions, and letting the girls ask questions.

I think it really helped them realize why we celebrate Christmas.

You can find this book at Deseret Book or Seagull Book for around $9.00 for the paper back.

Ours is one of those heavy duty chipboard books, which is nice because the kids love to sit and "read" the story to each other.

Click here for all of the Frost Advent Activities

Christmas Advent- Day 4: Take a picture of your favorite lights at Temple Square

Day 3 is still in the works. But for now, I hope you will enjoy some beautiful lights with us!

Of course the girls' favorites were the pink ones!  Good thing there were lots!

 This picture takes my breath away!

 This one is pretty cool, too.

 Our family just loves girls.  Nate's parents have 6 grandkids.  They are all girls!

This is my Chey, my niece Tabitha, and my baby Cassy.

Yes, we love pink!

 Wow!

 The pink trees were everywhere.

 I love the flag and the temple in one picture.

 This is my favorite nativity.  

If you have never been to the lights at Temple Square in Salt Lake,

you are missing out!

This nativity is sitting the middle of a beautiful reflecting pool and is surrounded by hundreds of floating lights.

AMAZING!

 I love the message that the shepherds share with us each Christmas.

Heavenly Father sees and cares for each of us.

Rich or poor, we are all special in His eyes.

 We have been going to the lights every year with my in-laws since the year we got married.

We have been snowed on, we've even been there in a blizzard.

But this is the first year it rained on us.

I prefer the snow!

 How cute is this nativity???

 I hope you are all having a wonderful Holiday Season!

And that we can all have the true meaning of Christmas in our hearts and on our minds.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Advent- Day 2: Kid Tree

Wow, I'm behind!  So, if you remember, we were working our way through our Elf on the Shelf Advent Calendar.  Remember how we lost the tree stand for the pink tree, so we couldn't do it that day?  Well, Daddy fixed our little problem the next day and we promptly set it up.

(Cute picture, huh?  Can you tell they did their own hair today?)

 We usually have a bunch of pink  & purple girly ornaments, but they are lost with the stand, so we used what we could rustle up.

 Like Dakota's improvised tree topper?

I think it is quite fitting for all these princesses!

Click for all of the Frost Advent Activities

Christmas Advent- Day 2: Meet Frost

Remember I mentioned we got an Elf on the Shelf this year?  Remember how I'm kind of a tightwad?  I looked into buying one at Hallmark, but I couldn't justify the price.  So I went to the Dollar Tree and found a cute Red Fairy.

I just took off her wings, made her a fun little hat, and added some puffs of white to her shoes.

Her name is Frost.  She comes on the night of December 1st and picks up our letters to Santa to deliver to the North Pole.  She comes back and "hides" somewhere around the house for the girls to find the next day.

Seeing as this was the first day, she "hid" amongst a fun North Pole breakfast. (Inspired by this post)

 Snow covered donuts,  hot cocoa with marshmallows and crushed candy cane, and red M&Ms

(cuz that's Frost's favorite color, of course!)

Each girl got a pair of Christmas sock, and there was a letter for Frost!

As mentioned in the letter, Frost brings us a fun activity to do each day.  She is our Advent Calendar!

 As a sad little aside:  All of my Christmas stuff is in storage.  Dear Hubby found the tree, but when we opened it up, the stand wasn't in it.  So, he is looking for the stand today so we can set up the tree!

 I think they enjoyed it!

 I know this has nothing to do with the rest of this post, but this is too cute not to share!

At least, it was cute the first few times...

Now it's just getting old having to re-decorate the tree every few minutes!

Where will Frost show up next???

Stay tuned!

Christmas Advent- Day 1: Letters to Santa

This year, our advent calendar is a little different from years past.  You have all heard of the Elf on the Shelf.  Well, this year, we got one!  And she is bringing us our daily advent activity.

So for day one, we wrote letters to Santa.

We put them on the tree so that our Elf could pick them up and take them to Santa while we were all sleeping soundly.

The older girls drew pictures for Santa on the back, too.

          

Then we put our letters on the tree and went to bed.