Sweets

Ah yes, the yearly sugar rush that is December. The kids have been eager to begin the holiday baking projects, and they could no longer be put off when even the advent calendar insisted that the sweetness should begin -- as I mentioned, we've been following a lift-the-flap Peanuts calendar that has daily suggestions for holiday activities. (Thanks again, Giki; we've been really enjoying it!) On Wednesday, the idea was to "make a holiday treat to eat."

I whipped up a batch of gingerbread for cut out cookies, since both BJ and BB have been clamoring for those, but both kids were impatient to make something right away. Our pantry was a bit bare, but I managed to scrounge up something fun and sufficiently sweet. Impromptu marshmallow snowmen!

A very easy, transitory treat: large marshmallows are the "snowballs," chocolate covered sunflower seeds for decorations (any small candy would work), and fruity licorice laces for "twig" arms. I gave each of the kids a small dish of honey to use as glue and let them loose!


I had some colored tube frosting on hand, so we used a bit of that for decorating as well. They didn't stand on their own for too long, because the honey tended to slide, and we found out when BB wanted to save hers for later that after a while the honey flavor is a bit much and does odd things to the marshmallow texture. If I were to do these again, I'd probably make a stiffer white frosting to use as adhesive. But for a small eat 'em right after you make 'em project, it was perfect!

Later that afternoon, the kids had a lot of fun making gingerbread cookies.

Especially because I didn't make too much of a fuss about the fact that they were as interested in eating the frosting as they were in icing the cookies.
BB has the sniffles, so I'd already decided to get territorial about the cookie creation process and separate out his from hers (and theirs from the ones I made for me and S) so that germ sharing would be as minimal as possible. So having decided as much, I figured what's a little extra spoonful of sugar here and there? Especially if it turns your teeth bright red, much to BJ's delight. It's a Christmas color after all!