Christmas Baking Has Commenced!

I have every intention of keeping up with my holiday baking this year and so far I'm off to a good start. Here it is the fourth day of December and Grace and I have already made two batches of Christmas cookies! Tuesday evening Grace helped me make candy cane cookie dough before she had to go to bed and I finished making them into candy canes and baked them that night. Yesterday we made painted cookies which is a holiday tradition. Last year Grace had the attention span of a gnat and only painted about 3 cookies before running off to do something else. This year she painted every cookie (with a little help from Mommy...I like painting cookies too!). She did a fantastic job and our painted cookies are beautiful! She even wanted to help me cut out a few cookies so she cut out a few. I'm just glad Ethan took a long three hour nap and therefore missed out on the entire messy process. I included the recipe below, it's really a fun cookie variety to make with kids.
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I even got bold and experimented with the timer feature on my camera so I could take some pictures of myself as well. I fear my poor children will grow up and wonder where Mommy was since there's so few pictures of us together! I'm generally the one behind the camera since I enjoy it but I still want pictures of myself with the kids every now and again. David enjoys photography as well, but isn't really a candid photographer kind of guy.

Painted Cookies
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
3 1/2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients together and add to butter/sugar mixture. Chill for at least an hour before rolling out and cutting with cookie cutters. Paint cookies with Egg Yolk Paint and bake in 375 degree oven for 5-6 minutes.

Egg Yolk Paint
1 egg yolk
1 tsp water
Liquid Food Coloring