mason half-birthday at preschool

of course the week before christmas break, mason would be the half-birthday snack friend. one more thing to do! i brought all of the teacher gifts on tuesday just to make sure i didn't run out of time or have too much to carry. (on a side note - did you know that you can order amazon gift cards from amazon.com in amounts starting at $10 that come in a free greeting card or box/tin with free overnight shipping to you for only the dollar amount of the gift card?! this was a wonderful accidental discovery and was perfect for last minute teacher gifts.)

since this is really mason's only chance to celebrate his birthday with friends this year, i wanted to produce whatever he wanted to bring as a snack to share. he chose gingerbread men. but not actual gingerbread men, he wanted sugar cookies cut to the shape of men with chocolate frosting so that they look like gingerbread men. sigh. generally, i would have tried to talk him out of this since i have rarely had a batch of sugar cookies come out well at all. but this past weekend i used a beautiful recipe that came out perfectly! so i agreed. only, they did not come out well. at all. like i couldn't even scrape the dough off the counter after i had given up.

so after consulting (and apologizing to) mason, i went out last night running around and trying to find somewhere with 22 cookies even remotely fitting his description. i was chatting with my mom while driving all over and she pointed out that i could just buy refrigerated sugar cookie dough instead. genius! plus, i had been to two stores already with no luck and was running out of options quickly.

only they didn't quite work out either. i thought it might be a temperature problem so i chilled one batch and froze another with no luck. they were sort of 'man' shaped so i pushed forward. not ideal. not nearly as cute as last year's hotdog baby jesus snack, but done. (the picture shows my beautiful one from this weekend, my failed version of the same recipe in the middle and my final product sent to school.) mason was happy and thought they were tasty. mission completion! (little einstein reference for the preschool set.) love.