Nursery Rhyme Sugar Cookies

I was asked earlier in the week if I would be willing to make some kind of baked good for a silent auction for a family adopting a girl from China.  The son is in my daughter's 2nd grade class.  I've been around the mom only a couple of times.  I really cherish the person who asked for the donation, so I replied that I'd be happy to bake something.

The following day, I was reading a blog post of a high school friend who is in Africa right now adopting not one, but 2, three year olds.  The post was titled "Help" and she spoke about helping make a difference in the lives of all the children desperately needing a family.  Help by considering adoption. Help by supporting other families going through the adoption process.  Help.

What do you know?  I had already agreed to help a family with their silent auction.  Now what?  I couldn't come up with a theme.  I fell asleep yesterday afternoon with my windows open and the Spa XM music playing in the background.  I woke up- totally relaxed with my eyes still closed- and saw a vision of a cookie with a tree and the word "grow".  I had my direction and got to work.

Mixing, rolling, baking, royal icing, frosting, food coloring, bags, tips, sprinkles...

I sorted through the cookie cutter collection and pulled out a half moon from the Autumn set, the egg with feet from the Easter set, the small gingerbread boy and girl from the Christmas set and the versatile gingerbread house cutter.

Before I knew it, I had a Nursery Rhyme-ish theme.

When I'm doing cookies, I try to figure out if I've seen a certain cookie somewhere.  I always want to give credit for non-original ideas, but this set was fresh to me.  I don't think I've seen a half moon, Humpty Dumpty or Jack & Jill.  I'm sure they exist somewhere out there on Google Images, but I kept to my own vision.

 I must say, I was most excited with the Humpty Dumpty Before and After the fall.

I'm afraid I've dropped the ball on passing along simple nursery rhymes to my children.  It's sad that they can sing nearly every word  of the top 40 songs, but have to make up words to nursery rhymes.

Jack & Jill and their pail of water:

 Here is the tray of cookies delivered to the silent auction.  

From what I heard, the cookies were the talk of the party.