The basic Christmas cookie in the States? Sugar cookies. The dough is easy to make. You get to roll it out, use cookie cutters, bake them and then frost them. Fun-wise it doesn't really get any better than that.

Sugar cookies are the gold standard of the holidays.

When I was growing up we'd make dozens of these cookies. They went on every cookie try and we gave them as gifts to everyone--teachers, neighbors, friends and family.

Now that I am older, they seem like a little more work than I'd like to go to on my own. The thought of little kids rolling sugar cookies out is cute. While the thought of me cutting cookie, after cookie out is not so cute. Not mention frosting all of these cookies after they bake and cool.

Anyhow, I pushed these thoughts out of my mind and I threw together a batch of sugar cookie dough (<a href="http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/sugar-cookies/90993177-b5fe-4cc7-a6b6-8f58913d36e8#?st=6&amp;term=Sugar%20cookies&amp;ps=9&amp;pi=9&amp;fv=AND%28HasGridViewImage%3ATrue%29" target="_blank">thanks once again Betty Crocker</a>). The thing about sugar cookies is that it's really important for the dough to chill at least 2 hours before you try to roll the dough or to cut it out. So I figured that I'll make the dough one night, bake the cookies another and wrap the whole thing up with frosting them the next night. That way I can really stretch these damn cookies out as long humanly possible.

Only thing is that I made the cookie dough a week ago, stored it away in a tupperware container and promptly ran out of time to do anything at home but sleep and make coffee for a week. <em>Awesome</em>. So yesterday on my first day of vacation I rolled out the cookies.  I cut out hearts because I don't actually have any Christmas cookie cutters and I baked the cookies.

Now I've got to frost them. These cookies are taking <em>forever</em> to actually make.

Oh well, they are going to be so cute (and tasty) once I've made the frosting and frosted them.