Family Santa Hats

Everyone in the family got a hat! But only just.  Each of our hats was reworked at least twice. . . boy do these ones stretch.  I used TuTu Boutique's pattern from Ravelry.  I sized down to an H hook (I think. . . the last few weeks are a bit of a blur) and the body of the hat ended up with the following number of stitches for each member of the family:

Kate (hat was too big in the end. . . I'll maybe fix it next year) - 70 sts

Kevin - 65 sts

Amelia (5) - 50 sts

Zoe (16 months) - 43 sts

We're following my English roots and not taking the decorations down til the 4th/5th of January so maybe they'll get a little more wear yet.  

Christmas Cookies

It is that time of year, where I take over the kitchen and dining room and make Christmas cookies.  We give them as gifts to friends, teachers, and child watch staff so it has become quite the undertaking.

Every year I tweak what I make and this year discovered a great blog just before I started baking.  I switched from the Martha Stewart royal icing recipe that I've been using for the last four years but has caused me a few issues lately to one courtesy of The Sweet Adventures of SugarBelle. For the first time I made two different consistencies of icing (piping and flooding) and it made such a huge difference to how neatly I was able to pipe. . . and for the first time in a while I had no clogs. . . even in my #1 tips.  I'll be using this method again, although I may try to work on getting a glossier finish next time.  I miss that from Martha's recipe.

This is what 250 cookies looks like stacked.

And here's a few of this years cookies.

Hopefully, next year I'll remember to get started in November and maybe make a little less red icing. I have a huge bowl left in my fridge.