Every year the search is on for the perfect sugar cookie recipe.  The well-used metal cookie cutters are selected and washed. Of course the antique ones are the best because they have an aura of perfect cookie baking about them. The freshest ingredients are assembled and the dough is in the refrigerator. This year the cookie frosting is pre-dyed and in aerosol cans with various tips. The cookies will be a wondrous variety of beautifully decorated creations!
NOT . . . the dough had large lumps of butter in it which would not blend in, and it waited in the refrigerator 3 whole days before a time was found for rolling, cutting, baking and decorating. The aerosol can was uncontrollable making huge gloppy bows and rocking horses with large pink eyes. The sugar frosting was too thin and the holes in the colored sugar bottle were too big. Halfway through I just gave up and allowed my artistic daughter to take over. For her, all the decorations behaved faultlessly making her cookies perfect and mine look like the work of a first grader.
Therefore, next Christmas I resolve to bake only drop cookies or squares.  There will be no frosting, colored sugar or aerosol cans anywhere near my kitchen and I am tossing out all sugar cookie recipes! Until next November when I see those cunning little cut out cookies at Starbucks and think, I can do that!
Better not throw away my cookie cutters just yet.