Welcome to day two of the Virtual Christmas Cookie Exchange. I am so happy you stopped by! Are you getting in the Christmas Spirit yet? Our temps have been in the 70’s, which is my kind of winter, but a little chill in the air makes it seem more like Christmas to me. At any rate, there’s always good food to be found during the holidays around our house. Fun times. We usually have a fun bake day with the grands loves, letting them bake and decorate cookies, but they’ve gotten so busy I’m not sure that will happen this year. Hopefully it will. First, I will share with you a pic of my favorite little bakers from a few years ago, all decked out in their aprons and chef hats I embroidered for them. I admit I’m prejudiced, but aren’t they adorable??!!! They grow up so quickly!
To make my project, which was designed in EQ8, I chose dies from Crafter’s Edge. I used the Half Square Triangles with dog-ear Corners set in sizes that finished at 2 inches and 4 inches. For the center, I used the Whimsical Christmas Tree Die set. Crafter’s Edge has a conversion platform that allows the dies to be used with AccuQuilt Go machines, and that is what I used to cut these pieces! It worked great!
Everything was cut out and ready to sew!! I have a lot of Christmas fabric in my stash, so I was able to make this project completely from said stash!! YAY me!! LOL I love Fairy Frost and other sparkly fabrics, so used those for the pinwheels and center block.
Lots of pieces sewn together to create my Christmas Cookie Mat, with goodies!!
My sweet recipe is from Big Oven – Snowman Sugar Cookies. Theirs are made from scratch and look much better than mine! LOL I’ll tell you a secret. I cheated! My sugar cookies were made from Pillsbury Eat or Bake Sugar Cookie Dough! I just guessed at the proportions, pinching here and adding there, and though slightly off, especially the bottom cookie, they turned out OK. They taste good anyway!! I don’t have round cookie cutters, so I thought this would be the easiest way, and it was pretty easy. They are iced with cream cheese icing (yep, it was store-bought too!) The hats are mini Oreos. They called for mini Reese’s peanut butter cups, on top of a chocolate cookie, but I didn’t have any, so I just used two mini Oreos and added a little icing between to hold them together. They look kind of like they’re melting, and they probably were since it was almost 70 here the morning I was making them!!
The savory recipe is from Plain Chicken – Cracked Out Sausage Hash Brown Balls. Oh.My.Goodness are they ever good!! We ate them for breakfast!! What does “crack” mean you ask? Simply, they have ranch, cheddar and bacon in the recipe!! Stephanie has some awesome “cracked out” recipes!
You can probably figure out how to make this little table topper, but I did create a tutorial for you, if you’d like it. The mat measures 16.5 x 16.5. This is the first time I’ve tried odd shaped binding. It wasn’t too bad to do, though it is not perfect by any means!! This is a free download from Payhip or you can get it in my shop here. Just log in or create an account, and add to cart. No charge!
Please visit my fellow bloggers today and see what inspiration and goodies they offer!
December 7
MooseStashQuilting
Songbird Designs
Beaquilter
Selina Quilts
Life in the Scrapatch
Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life
Homespun Hannah’s Blog
Cynthia’s Creating Ark
Samelia’s Mum
Thanks for visiting. Enjoy the goodies and have a great week!
Such a sweet Christmas cookie mat! Love your sweet snowman cookies. Thanks for sharing on my 300th Wednesday Wait Loss.
Your cookie mat looks great, Brenda, and those snowman cookies are adorable! I didn’t know there were 3rd party dies available that work with AccuQuilt cutters! Thanks for that tip! And thanks for linking up with me for TGIFF. Hope you and your family have a fantastic Christmas season!
That is adorable and so festive!
Oh I love your mat with the Christmas tree. LOL using the bake and eat cookie dough, the snowmen are cute, and hashbrown bites look yummy.
Oh, how fun! First, your little grandloves are adorable – and yes they grow up much to quickly! Really adorable cookie mat – binding looks so great – love that bias stripe. Just darling. Thanks for sharing the Snowman Cookie hacks too. My little grands would love them. Haha – hashbrown crack! Sounds delicious!
Hi Brenda! Your little bakers are SO cute, and it is expected that you’d be partial to them. Thank you for sharing your recipes and table topper. Merry Christmas!
I love your table topper! The whimsical tree is such a cute die. I love it. Thanks for sharing!
Love your topper, and yes, they are adorable. One of them looks like he may have an ornery streak in him. Except its not really being ornery just being a boy. Hope you are able to do some baking with them. Merry Christmas.
Brenda, I love the cookie mat (I thought that Xmas tree die didn’t look too appealing–and then I saw your tree–neat!!) and the cookies look just right to me! Those sausage balls are something I am going to have to make–just printed out the recipe. 🙂 Your grands look so cute! It’s too bad they grow up, isn’t it? Thanks for sharing!
What a cute baking crew and the recipes sound yummy. I love your shortcuts on the snowmen cookies. Such a sweet table mat, too!
I love your snowman cookies, and the shortcuts you took making them.
Thank you Brenda for a sweet post filled with recipes, a pattern for a cute cookie mat and your Mini Chef/Bakers in their cute aprons. I’m checking out the sausage/hash brown balls now!
Your table runner is such fun. I love that quirky tree.
Your grandies are sweet and hopefully you find some time to have a bake day with them this year.
Oh my your kids just have the most infectious smiles, they are making me smile! What a fun and yummy post.
Your bakers and their chef outfits are adorable! Looks like they were having a good time. Love the little Christmas Cookie Mat, and thanks for the tutorial! What cute snowmen cookies – yum, and the variation on the sausage ball is one I’ll have to try.
Lovely table-topper!
Adorable snowmen cookies! And I love the whimsical tree, especially with your choice of a striped fabric. Looks great!
Sorry if this shows up more than once… I am having trouble with my WordPress log in getting accepted to leave a comment, not sure why. Going to try with just my email now.
Adorable helper bakers. Love the cookie mat and those hash brown balls look yummy. Thanks for sharing!
Cute baking crew, and cute table topper, too! The cookies and hash brown balls look tasty!
Brenda thank you for sharing such a fun post filled with lovely recipes, a pattern and a photo of the mini Chefs! Perfect!
The whimsical tree topper is so cute. I don’t even remember seeing that die cut before, lol! The top of the tree die cut piece would make a cute elf or gnome hat too. The snowmen are cute. I don’t bake anymore, so I didn’t join in this blog hop. FYI: when I clicked on the link in other blog hop participants, it took me to your site, but this post wasn’t there. Even clicking on “blog” at the top of your site your post didn’t show up. Not sure why? I tried this on several blog hoppers sites. I came here from your email newsletter. So in case you don’t get many comments or views, there might be something amiss in blogland?
I love your snowmen and I really love that you took that shortcut with premade cook dough. I am all about the shortcuts this time of the year! LOL!! I just bought that tree die and I have some of that fabric myself here. I guess I know what little project I will be making now. 🙂 Thanks for the inspiration.
Good morning, Brenda! Look at those three bakers!! How fabulous is that??! YES, they ARE adorable. Not just to you but to me, too. Those snowman cookies are fab. I think my littles – or three of them, anyway – would just LOVE to eat these. Nothing wrong with using helpful products. Isn’t that what we quilters do when we use a rotary cutter or pre-cuts?!! Those products were made to make our lives easier. Thanks for the tutorial on the cute Christmas Cookie Mat. I think it turned out just great. Merry Christmas to you and your family. {{Hugs}} ~smile~ Roseanne
Your cookies look perfect! Love the table runner! Happy Holidays!