Every year since my daughter has been old enough to help, we've done a gingerbread house. We usually just pick a kit up when we see one. We've done gingerbread trains, gingerbread castles and classic gingerbread houses. We also usually make some type of Christmas cookies. This year we made gingerbread man cookies to go with our house. I'm sure we will make more cookies for our annual Christmas Eve party, but it was fun to get a head start on baking with my little one.

I usually have to do the icing, and have her place the candies. Although it never fails that she will sneak little samples of the candy as she is decorating! But that is part of the fun.

For this shoot, I used my Lensbaby Velvet 56, as well as my Sigma 35 ART lens, for most of the images. The Velvet definitely gives the images that vintage, painterly feel that I was going for. I had her dressed, probably for the last time, in this adorable Christmas nightgown that we have had for at least 3 years now. I love the timeless look of the red gingham, and she told me she wants to keep it for her daughter.

She really enjoyed rolling out the dough (I got her started). She used this small rolling pin I found at an estate sale. Just the perfect size for her little hands.

Decorating the cookies is really just as much fun as cutting them out! We kept it very simple- just icing and sprinkles.

After all the decorating, we of course had to indulge in some hot cocoa! I found these huge snowflake marshmallows at Anthropologie and knew she would love them.