Cole and Immy spent a few days over these Summer holidays at a holiday programme run through their beloved gymnastics centre.They had a great time there - to the point where they didn't want to leave at the end of the day. Unfortunately, they also had a really tough time with me leaving in the mornings...6+ months of being home with mama and little outside interaction in the form of wee friends and regular preschool (like they were used to in NZ) has taken its toll, and there's a bit of separation anxiety. I'm sure it's something that we'll be able to gently work through, but there were a couple of tough mornings involving tears. Mine included (but I managed to keep them in until the kids couldn't see me!) And the coaches were so lovely and kind and understanding, that I figured we needed to find a way to say thanks...
I saw a cookie gift idea on Pinterest (here) for a Valentines treat, and decided to modify it a little for the coaches. This is what I did:
I split the cookie dough into 5 balls once it was made, and added a little food colouring to 4 of them - Immy had overseen the colour choice (much!) earlier in the piece. I then rolled each ball out and used a star cookie cutter to make a gajillion little shortbread stars. (there were also a few hearts as you can see - a special request from my heart loving wee lass)
I used the recipe in the link above, but ended up annoyed at myself for not using my tried and true shortbread recipe, as the cookies seemed a little bland (that may have been user error on my part since I seem insistent on baking at 1am!!) Rather than make more (1am, remember?) I melted some dark chocolate and partially dipped each star.
And then it was just a matter of packaging them up - 5 stars in a small cellophane bag, tied with twine, and a wee label attached. The kids coloured all over a piece of A4 cardstock with every colour crayon in a random patchworky manner until there was no white remaining, and then we used a scalloped round punch to cut out tags. A single hole punch, a little writing, (each coach's name on the front, and *you're a star!* on the back. Cheesy but hopefully forgivable!) and voila!
Next time I think I'll type up the message and names on the cardstock pre-colouring, but I didn't think of it this time round until after the punch was being well used!
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