Baking with Friends

As of last Thursday afternoon, I had zero RSVPs for children attending our baking party.  I had one decline, and that was it.  Then Thursday night, we finally started hearing from children.  On Saturday, we had nine children in attendance of the twelve invited.  Between Friday and Saturday I also had over twenty texts from two little girls, one invited, another that isn't even friends with The Redhead, trying to get herself invited to the party.  Luckily that mess sorted itself out.  And luckily this table did too.

What's interesting is that I was disappointed I didn't finish my wreath or make my gingerbread garland.  Then looking at it all, you'd never know there was going to be more to it.  And that's okay.

The party ran from noon to four.  What do you feed nine little girls?




Pizza, of course.

And how do you keep nine little girls busy?

Well, you don't just supply them gobs of candy.

 And you don't just feed them sweets, either.

Luckily, we rented a table again.  

And after they ate their pizza, we put together miniature gingerbread houses.  I was going to just do the graham cracker versions, but Mister Man insisted on us buying these.

We also had "trees" out of sugar cones and these fantastic plates I found at the 99 cent Only store.  They were the perfect size!

I put a few of them to work stirring green food coloring in some canisters of frosting.

Then, while they worked on their gingerbread houses, I took them two at a time to the kitchen to start on some cookies.  I had aprons and Santa hat hair clips waiting for them, hanging in the hall.

Each girl rolled out their own ball of dough, whether with their hands or a rolling pin.  It was completely up to them.  They chose their own cookies cutters from a bowl and put their cut cookies on a pan with parchment paper.  I had written their names on the parchment paper.  I had bought enough pans so we could use this method and baked two pans at a time.

This took a bit of time, so luckily girls were working on their gingerbread creations.  And when most of them were done with that, they started playing their own games together.  Frozen also had been playing on the television.

Before you think I'm a saint, I cheated on the dough.  I used four packages of Betty Crocker mix, making each one suitable for cutout cookies.

Meanwhile, the cat hid in our room.

One of the girls was writing this log.  I was laughing.  Very hard.  Not because she felt sad. Or any of that.  But it was funny to me just the same.

After a private party of a few girls under my dining room table, and some children taking an incredibly long time to cut out their cookies, it finally came the time to decorate cookies.

Just as the gingerbread houses were all so very different, their plates of cookies were too.

We put them all up on plates, slide them into gingerbread man bags, tied them up, and sent them all home.  I also managed to send lots of extra goodies home too.  My waistline thanks me.

Later it was just The Redhead and one of her friends and they played in the kitchen with the hot cocoa cart.

And that was just as much fun as the party, aside from the squeaky noise those wheels make when it's wheeled across the floor.  But we survived the baking party.  The only issues involved the whipped cream I again forgot to put out and the hot cocoa mix reindeer we never made.  But you know what?  It was still a success.  After all, we managed to have nine pans of cookies cut, baked, and decorated by nine girls, and that's miraculous.