christmas trees and santa hats

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Every year for as long as I can remember, our girls have each hosted a Christmas late night and treat exchange. The girls all bring a dozen of their favorite Christmas treat, we put one on each plate and they have a whole plateful of fun to take home. This year, a lot of them got excited and made it through their plates BEFORE they went home...

 We start the evening by making a fun ornament. This year, we kept it simple and made stockings using felt and a boa. (Our Princess decided this year that her friends might be too old for this part, so we skipped it. Boo on growing up!!)
We have caramel popcorn, chocolate popcorn, and buttered popcorn and watch a Christmas movie. We also have an eclectic collection of Christmas mugs that we break out just for this occasion for cocoa with different marshmallows and toppings. Our Princess chose 'Christmas With the Kranks' (possibly the. best. christmas. movie. ever.) for her party and My Angel chose 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' with Jim Carey. We had to pull it off a little bit early this year to make it happen, but nobody seemed to mind. I love to hear the peals of laughter all night as the girls interact with each other. It makes all the effort worth it.
Ever since October when we made these witch hats and loved them, I have been wanting to try Christmas trees. I've never used candy melts before, and when I was buying the green ones, I saw some red ones and wondered if we should try Santa hats as well. This is a sickness that I have.  I admit it.
I just used leftover sugar cookie dough from these cookie sticks to make it easier, but I think it would be fun to do a gingersnap cookie with the Christmas tree, so next year I'll try that. I made them exactly the same way as the witches hats, using the candy melts instead of the almond bark.

 We made a mix of Christmas candy corns, star gum drops, Christmas gummys, and m and m's to fill the cones with.

I left the cone showing a little bit at the bottom of the trees for the trunk and attached it with chocolate almond bark to the cookie.

Adding the pretzel stars was Our Princess's idea and that's what totally makes it perfect.  The pretzels and m and m's have to be added after it has set up just a bit or they just slide on down to the bottom...

The Santa hats took a little more thought.  Our Princess and I tried a few different ways before we found something that was perfect.  After spreading on the red candy melts and letting them set, we filled them and painted the red the rest of the way down to attach the cone to the cookie.  -We made smaller cookies that barely fit the bottom of the sugar cone for these ones-. Then we added a large marshmallow to the top, and used a thick powdered sugar frosting with a decorating tip to swirl the bottom.


Enjoy!