Today I decided to quarantine my children. Christmas Eve is on Saturday and just about everyone on my Facebook and Twitter feeds are complaining about the flu. Yes, the kids did get their flu shot this year but do I really want to tempt the fates?!

So I had to think of activities, and fast. Say hello to sugar cutout cookies. (Thanks Brooke for the phone call yesterday, I don't think this would have been my first choice of crafts had we not just discussed cookies.)

I don't think Max or Rory really grasped keeping the cookie cutters within the dough as both of them left one sticking outside of the dough.

Max:

Rory:

After those beautiful pictures I went to remove the cookies and this is where it all went terribly wrong.

Yup, the dough was WAY too soft and would not hold it's form. (It even sat in the fridge for 20 minutes.) I'd call it a rookie error but the truth is, whenever I make cutout cookie dough from scratch I inevitably fail. Don't you worry though, I still call this a win because less then 20 minutes later our first batch of sugar cookie (now drops) were cooled enough on the rack for the icing.

Max and Rory whipped it up themselves and then got very serious with the application.

Oh, and of course licking their knives.

So I win, because we still had yummy sugar cookies that let the kids play with their cookie cutouts, (even if it didn't work,) they were able to ice their own cookies, and they even helped clean up the mess.

OK, maybe that made a bigger mess but it was an activity that took up quite a bit of time without any whining. So like I said, I win.