cookies + making messes

We've been baking up different cookies the last couple days. We've definitely made a fun mess in the kitchen with flour, powdered sugar and sprinkles. I know I'll be finding sprinkles throughout the house for the next six months, but it's all worth it to make these fun memories with Kensi and Finn. 

If you follow me on instagram you may have seen some of our fun on the instastories. Baking together may look stressful, but it's absolutely hilarious. Kensi can be so serious and a little Grinch-y when Finn is screaming at the top of his little lungs trying to help by placing cookie cutters all over the freshly rolled out dough and hogging all the room. I look forward to adding Olivia to our beautiful mess in the kitchen!

Kids are so truthfully blunt and honest by the way. I experienced much of their honesty when I taught preschool, but it's so different when it's your own kids. I tried explaining to Kensi the significance of our Cinnamon Star recipe. That her Great-Great-Grandma Mary is the one who made these special cookies and she taught Grandma Walz and Grandma taught me and now I'm teaching Kensi. She's only four and I know she won't completely understand, but the poor girl is confused by the thought of having more than one great-grandmother, which both are named Mary. Long story short, Kensi refers to her Great-Great-Grandma as the one who died, not the one who lives in Iowa. So sorry Grandma! I'm guessing she's probably laughing on my struggle trying to explain her to Kensi.

When baking cookies around here we have to work around Finn’s afternoon nap. We started by rolling the dough out and cutting each cookie before nap. During nap we did clean up and prepared our icing colors. I used a combination of regular and neon food coloring for more playful kid colors. Once Finn woke up we were ready to decorate! We placed each icing color in a bag, snipped the tip and helped the kids as needed. Finn especially loved decorating with sprinkles. His entire work space was covered with every sprinkle I laid out for them. And there in the middle of his sprinkle masterpiece, lay a small sugar cookie, with a little icing and just a pinch of sprinkles on it! 

We vacuumed up so many sprinkles it sounded like beads trapped in the canister spinning around.  I really don’t care about the mess, Kensi and Finn have so much fun playing and learning in the kitchen. We all had so much fun. Mike actually got really into his decorating, I think I may have to invest in some swankier decorating tools for him next year!