Cookie exchange

Sunday mom had her first cookie exchange party at her house. She invited a lot of our old friends from the church where I grew up and it was great to see people we haven't seen in a long time. The idea behind a cookie exchange is that you bring some kind of "specialty" christmas cookie and you bring 4 dozen, enough for eating at the party and then people get to fill up boxes and take different cookies home. I chose to make candy cane sugar cookies! The recipe seemed easy enough but never will I ever attempt to make that cookie again! The sugar cookie part was easy enough and then you color two batches of dough with different colors (I chose red and green) and then you roll out the dough into little like straws and then you braid them together and shape them into a candy cane. This seems not that difficult but trust me it is! The straws or whatever you want to call the dough can't be too fat, can't be too short, too long, etc. We probably made 30 cookies we ended up throwing out cause they looked nothing like a candy cane! When I say "we" I mean ben and I. It took both of us about 5 hours to get 4 dozen cookies. Ben was not pleased that he got roped into this project but the truth was it would NOT have gotten done without someone to help me.

These were the candy cane cookies on their cookie sheets before baking...see how long it took! 8 candy canes to a sheet because once their baked they spread out a lot.

Close up

These are the cookies mom made which were AWESOME! Can you believe after all that I didn't even take a picture of the cookies I made after they were completed. I think I was at the point where I NEVER wanted to see those cookies again!

Me and my friend susie at the cookie exchange. She is the daughter in law of one of mom's good friends and goes to church with ben and I at north davis.

Walking around the table picking up cookies!

Two of my favorite people. Aunt dolly and sister beth

Old friends! It was so good to see some of these ladies again! Mom is of course the most gorgeous and the hostest with the mostest!

The butler's pantry full of yummy snacks to cleanse your palette between cookie tasting!

Mom's beautiful and GIANT tree!

Some of the cookies all spread out on the table! There were TONS! This was a really fun party and I think mom plans to do it again next year and next year...I'm gonna go with what ben said to me at about 11:30 when we had been working on candy cane cookies for 4 hours "what's wrong with chocolate chip cookies? they're easy and everybody likes them!"