Fall Traditions

     Fall is officially here!  The trees in my neighborhood are all lovely shades of orange, yellow, and red.  There are still a few green things out there, but the color palette is fabulous!  Fall of course means back to school all over the country, but if you live in Michigan, this is also the time that pretty much every family makes a trek to a local apple orchard.  For little man, today was his first school field trip and it was of course.....to an apple orchard.  All three kindergarten classes loaded into a school bus with their teachers and met about 40 parent chaperones at Erwin's Orchard.  I have to assume that there were so many parents simply because it was the first field trip of our children's school career.  I know I wasn't going to miss it!

     Going to an apple orchard with seventy five 5 year olds meant only one thing, COOKIES!!  Cookies had to be made to share with all these kiddos.  Nevermind that they were each going to get a doughnut absolutely coated with cinnamon sugar, this was the perfect opportunity to make apple tree cookies!  I had a tree cutter that I picked up about 2 months ago and was just waiting for an excuse to use it! 

This is how I ended up decorating them. I used m&ms for the apples (if you can't tell!).  I tried a few different ways of icing them and I'm still not sure this is my favorite.  Next time I do them, I am thinking of making the apples in the trees using the flat polka-dot method a la Bake at 350.  Of course, this makes me wonder, how often do you change your mind about how you want to do something when you're half way done with it!?  I know I do it a lot with my cookies!  Please, share your stories....