Valentine Drop in and Decorate

Well, it's taken a while for me to post this, but let's just say I am stretching Valentine's day until the end of the month ;-)

Valentine's Day is a whole lot of fun with my kids so I decided to have a party. Not just any party, but a Drop in and Decorate party.

According to their website, "Drop In & Decorate is a simple concept: bake some cookies, invite friends or family (or neighbors, or co-workers) to stop in and help decorate, then donate your cookies to a local food pantry, emergency shelter, senior center, lunch program, or other community agency meeting the needs of food or shelter."

Lydia mailed me a generous Michael's gift card and Pillsbury coupons to get me started. Using squeeze bottles for icing made this so much easier. And fun.

So we got to enjoy decorating cookies and we got to share the love with some local nonprofits too. We all got to keep a cookie (or two) for ourselves. Much better than being left with the typical glut of cookies afterwards.

All in all, we had 19 kids and 8 moms at the party. We decorated about 80 cookies. It was a lively time and thankfully my 14 month old enjoyed watching the excitement from her high chair (with a cookie, of course).

And I made my own natural food coloring too! (But I'll have to write about that some other time.)