Get Crafty

One of my favourite family holiday traditions has always been making Christmas cookies. It is a tradition that has been passed down through our family, and I am continuing it on today with my daughter. This year my daughter decided she wanted to try to make them herself, and they turned out great! I was the official documenter, taking pictures and recording the decorative results for our family scrapbook.

To make the scrapbook layout more personal, I decided to use our favourite Christmas cookie recipe as part of the layout. I also used cookie cutters to make my own die-cuts to embellish the page. I was very happy with the results!

Directions:

Take several photos of your family making Christmas cookies. If you didn't make any this year, you may have some old photos laying around from Christmases past. I chose to use only three photos in this layout because the recipe took up a lot of room on the page. I took a picture of the unfrosted cookies as they came out of the oven, a picture of my daughter frosting the cookies, and then a picture of the finished cookies.

For the background paper, I chose a holiday-themed piece of 12x12 paper. It is green with holly berries. To mat the pictures and the caption, I used green cardstock.

For the caption, I typed "Making Cookies, Christmas 2004" vertically on a page in a large font that I liked and printed it off the computer. I matted this narrow piece with green cardstock and glued it to the left-hand side of the background page.

For the pictures and the recipe, I used a full 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of green card stock for the matting. I printed out the recipe and placed it at the bottom of the card stock (with a picture of the finished cookies at the right-hand bottom corner of the recipe), and I arranged the other photos at the top of the card stock with two die-cuts I created from our cookie cutters. The cookie cutter shapes were a bell and star cut from yellow card stock. I glued all these pieces to the green card stock and then glued the card stock to the background page. That's it!

Here is the Christmas cookie recipe:

Christmas Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 c. butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 egg
2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cream of tartar

Mix powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, almond extract, and egg. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Divide dough into halves. Roll each half 1/2-inch thick on lightly floured surface. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Bake on lightly greased cookie sheet until the edges are brown, 7 to 8 minutes. Makes 5 dozen cookies. Frost when cookies are completely cooled.

Frosting

3 c. powdered sugar
1/3 c. butter, softened
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 tbsp. milk

Mix powdered sugar and butter. Stir in vanilla and milk. Beat until smooth and easy to spread. Divide into bowls and add food colouring until desired colours.

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom. For scrapbooking, card making, gift-giving ideas, and more family memory-making activities, visit http://www.crafty-moms.com.