Girl Scout Brownie Christmas Party Ideas

Hello,
Well I bake for a living and the best frosting for cookies is: 1/2 cup of crisco shortening
1 stick of butter
4 cups of powder sugar
1 tsp of vanilla
3-4 tbls of milk
mix the crisco and the butter together until smooth add sugar slowly a cup at a time, add vanilla and milk as needed, if the frosting is to tick add more milk, a little at a time. Hope this helps, C.

My mom just came in town and bought my niece this COOL cookie kit. It has recipes and cookie cutters shaped like clothing.
The same principle as paper dolls but with cookies. Tres cool!
I have left a message for her to find out where she got it and will update this msg when I find out.

I love Christmas parties!! :D WalMart and Michaels have great craft sets for good prices. I bought some of those foam Christmas trees and some glitter paint for the kids in our playgroup to decorate this year. Also, for the cookies you can get the gel icing (cake isle at WalMart) or the spray icing. Both work really well. Maybe get some of the bigger size sprinkles they can press into the cookies instead of something the icing will have to "glue" down.
Good luck!! Hope you all have lots of fun!! :D

Hi I sell Avon,
And i do Fundraisers. But think of this. What lil girl wouldnt like to have in their goodie bag a lip balm with a cartoon character. Flavored in cherry, bubblegum grape, rasberry, etc. they are just 69cents. I can possible donate a few but the rest would have to be ordred for a large amount.

Let me know and i can either drop off some brochures.
J. S.
AVON Ind Sales
____@____.com

Hi M., I have had the opportunity to be homeroom mom for my sons 1st & 3rd grade class at school. At our Christmas parties we have decorated gingerbread men and the kids have loved it and had so much fun with this project. My kids even decorated some this past Thanksgiving weekend and had a great time. You can either make your own homemade icing beforehand and it will be smooth enough to decorate with and yet stiff enough after there finally done decorating with the candies that the icing will get hard enough to transport. Have fun with your cookie project....good luck

To address your frosting question directly - try your local Hobby Lobby or other craft store - they now have icing that comes in glue like bottles (imagine Elmer's Glue) and can be used for pinpoint decorating as well as writing. It sets up almost instantly and is much easier for the kids to control! Instead of having the kids start from scratch, put the "base" icing on the cookies ahead of time so it has time to set and then let them accessorize for the fun part. One bag of Twizzlers twists (the kind that pull apart into a lot of strings) and a stop to the candy store at the mall for single color M&M's and you've got the basics for "musical cookies" (use the string for the lines and M&M's for the dots) The new ziploc containers are great for transporting messy items, since they prevent crushing like baggies and are less likely to pop open. If you precut several sheets of wax paper, you'll have the troop on the road in no time at the end of the party. Good luck!

One idea you may want to consider is pre-frosting the cookies with a white buttercream frosting. Then you can let the girls "paint" the cookies with waterdowned food coloring. I saw this idea in the Taste of Home holiday baking magazine. I also like the Stained Glass cookies. Those are really neat! Other fun things to do might be to build a "Christmas Cookie Jar" with everything you need for cookies in one jar or make Holiday scrapbooks. Those are always neat and make great gifts! Happy holidays and have fun!

I love decorating sugar cookies! I always use Wilton Color Flow Mix. It comes in a 4 oz. container. You can buy this powder at Hobby Lobby or Wal-Mart. I usually buy it at Hobby Lobby though, where you can use a 40% off coupon. You can print coupons from their website. This week they have a 40% off coupon on their website. (usually they rotate every other week between a 40% off coupon on any non-sale merchandise or another random coupon) It runs somewhere around $7.00 a container, but with a 40% off coupon should be around $5.00 after tax. All you have to do is mix the powder with powdered sugar and water. Then you can separate it into multiple batches and mix in the dye. This is the same decoration used on cookies like those sold through Cookie Bouquet. It hardens nicely.

Make sure to make the color flow icing before the girls get there, and then decorate the cookies right away. The directions say that it needs to harden for about 2 days. But in 1 and 1/2 hours it should definitely be hard enough for the girls to take home. I have never had a problem with it being too wet!

I do recommend mixing in more water than the recipe calls for! And if you do decide to use it, place a wet paper towel or cloth over the top of each bowl (otherwise it will form a crust on top)! I use the container of mix multiple times.

Hope this helps!

www.wilton.com also has the best sugar cookie recipe ever!

Hi M.-
Try wrapping them in wax paper and placing them in a zip lock. You could also ask the moms to bring their own tupperware container to place them in and take them home.

Have you ever seen the little gingerbread house made out of small milk cartons, graham crackers, white icing, and candy accents. They are fun and festive as well. The kids love to eat and make at the same time. They all turn out so cute!! You can collect the milk cartons from you childs cafeteria and then allow them to soak in a bleach solution in the sink for an hour. I cut out small cardboard squares and wrapped them in tin foil, then use a dab of icing to secure the milk carton and allow to dry over night. We used plastic spoons and white icing for the adhesive and got all sorts of candy to make the house (marshmallows, candy canes, m & m's, sugar sprinkles, colored sprinkles, chocolate kisses, ect.) They will fit in the large zip lock freezer bags to take home and use as their center piece for the family dinner!! Good Luck!

your icing will set faster if set in fridge or outside in the cold...

you can go to the store and buy regular white frosting. When it comes time to decorate the cookies, add about 1/2 cup of powder sugar to one tub of frosting and that will thicken it up plus you can use that time to add food coloring. Then you can add sprinkle and stuff like that to cookie right after you frost it. Hope this helps.

The one most special time I remember from Brownies was when my Mom hosted our Christmas Party/Meeting. We were earning our baking badge and we made stained glass cookies. My Mom made the dough and we rolled it out making whatever Christmas theme we wanted either a tree, star, ornament or shape we wanted. She had already ground the candy into powder before hand so once our shape was done, we poured the colored powder into the cookie dough and baked them. Then all we had to do was let them cool and they were ready to take home. From then on every one always wanted stained glass cookies at Christmas. If you are interested in getting the recipe, let me know and I will get it from my Mom.

Hi M., I run a traveling party business www.myhuggableparty.com. The girls can hand stuff the cuddly collectible of their choice, or I have special holiday friends- a Gingerbread friend or a Snowman that they can stuff and we have PATCHES!! I have many other animals to choose from that are not holiday themed as well as brownie and girl scout outfits for the animals. These workshops are perfect for any time as well.

And if you are looking for a way to make some money for home, or if you want to get a discount on all the animals you purchase you can become a crew member and run your own party business and let your troops benefit from your discount, as well as get some extra pocket change for you! There are never any minimums to order so even if you just joined so you can enjoy the exclusive member discount it is SO worth it!

Check out my website and call or email me today and we can chat.

I am a stay at home mom of a 7 month old little girl and I truly love what I do! I choose my own hours and only book parties when I want to. This business is what helps me stay home with my daughter so I never miss a thing.

For the cookies that have wet icing, put them in a christmas ziplock baggie as each girl leaves.

For entertainment to go along with the music theme you could play musical chairs.

It's nice to meet a fellow girl scout leader. I am the service unit manager in my town. Last year, one of the games that the girls really enjoyed was a relay race where they divided up into two teams. Each team had a fairly large bowl of wrapped peppermints. They had regular sized spoons. On the other side of the room, each team had a big stocking. They had to take turns scooping up some peppermints on the spoon, and carrying the mints on the spoon to pour into the stocking. The team that finishes filling their stocking wins.

Another game that we played was the candy cane game. Divide into two teams. The first person on each team places candy canes between her four fingers, and has to pass them to the next player so that they are end up in between the other player's fingers, and so on down the line. No helping with the other hand. The team that gets their candy canes to the end wins.

Divide into two teams, each player gets a straw and the team gets a small piece of paper. The first player on each team sucks the paper to the end of the straw, and has to keep it on the end in order to pass it to the next player. The next player holds the paper to the end of her straw, and passes it down the line. The team that gets the paper to the end of the straw first, wins.

Go to Pilsbury.com, they have some wonderful cookie ideas and other recipes also.
Maybe ask each of the girls to bring in a flat box (water or canned goods boxes), or maybe your neighbors could help save them for you. That way the cookies are a little flatter (to help them dry) to make the trip home.

During the party, you could play Christmas themed songs on the instruments you create. (I'm assuming that you will be making items like tambourines, maracas, slide whistles, etc.)
For cookie decorating: To save time, use canned frosings. They are more solid and hold up to transporting. You can color the white and use various colored sugars, sprinkles, candies, etc. (also- check and see if any of the cookie baking helps in qualifying for a cooking badge)
You can serve hot chocolate with marshmallows or whipped cream or oranges with peppermint sticks as straws.
Maybe add an additional craft - make ornaments for the girls to give their parents as pressents. There are tons of quick and easy ornament ideas. You could also have them paint wooden or ceramic blanks.(cheap and easy to find at Michael's)
You could also have each girl bring a wrapped gift (set a dollar amount - say $5) and have a White Elephant exchange.
A great service project this time of year would be something like items for a local food bank, stockings filled with personal items (socks, shampoo, soap, toothbrush/paste, comb, etc.) or hats,scarves or mittens to be donated to shelters,etc.
Hope you all have a WONDERFUL party!
H.

How about scrapbooking. i am acreative memories consulant. I would love to come to one of your meetings. The girls usually love this. K.

Try fiding a new icing....

I used to do the kids xmas party at church every year..so these parties can get overwhelming :) a few thoughts: cookie decorating was fun, but we let the kids only do two, or three cookies if they were really small, then they ate the cookies right there for snack time, so no traveling w/ cookies had to be worked out..
as far as the "music" theme...maybe do like musical chairs to some type of music not normally listened to, Handels Messiah, or tuba music or something of that nature..what about a game about who can think of the most musical instruments..or if you had a cd w/ different instrument sounds on it, play a few seconds of the music then have the girls write down what instrument they thought it was...guitar, drum, trumpet, etc..

good luck!