Cookies anyone?

This evening my husband came home and decided to tidy out a cupboard - this isn't unusual he has always been much more tidy minded than I am. In the bottom of the cupboard he found a large carrier bag full of cookie cutters that hadn't seen the light of day since we moved to this beautiful apartment from our much larger family home a few years ago. Now it has to be said I am a bit of a hoarder and there were a considerable amount of cutters so I was given the job of washing them all and getting rid of any broken ones. As I washed memories flooded into my mind and I was transported back to when my children were small. Some of the first cutters we had were there - metal dinosaurs that can't really be used any more because they are too rusty but that I will never part with because I can see my two year old son wielding them now, dressed in his customised Spot the Dog jumper his nanny had lovingly knitted for him and covered in flour. We couldn't get a pattern for that jumper - his uncle had to painstakingly draw Spot on graph paper so my wonderful mother in law could knit her precious grandson a sweater with his favourite character on.

Lots of Halloween ones there too, reminding me of the parties we held for the kids friends and the gingerbread house I baked one time, that wasn't a major success as the roof was falling in but was loved anyway as we just made it into a haunted house - they're supposed to be falling down! I remember apple bobbing and all the children (and my husband ) ending up soaked but laughing fit to burst as they then fed each other with jelly blindfolded.

The musical notes date from when my daughter first discovered her musical talents and began playing the trumpet - from then on everything had to have a musical theme from biscuits to Christmas decorations. I was amazed that this little auburn haired girl could produce such great sounds from the trumpet and the sight of her standing alone in the middle of her primary school hall playing 'when the saints go marching in' at the end of her year 6 leaving assembly always brings a nostalgic tear, she's just as music mad now and has one of her trumpets, keyboard and one of her guitars with her at uni, the others wait in her room for her. Wallace and Gromit are there too along with Ronald McDonald and various other characters.

Not just biscuit cutters of course - the bread presses are there too that I used to put messages on the sandwiches in their packed lunches, before they got old enough to be embarassed by them. I used to use them on my husbands sandwiches too actually, he's had to put up with a lot over the years! The classic gingerbread man cutters were used to create Power Rangers for my son's birthday one year and I iced them all with coloured fondant icing but was only allowed to make one White Ranger for the birthday boy - he was special! His small friends were very impressed and very envious of the White Ranger, that was the year that we spent most of December trying to get hold of a Dragonzord which was of course all he wanted for Christmas, along with just about every other boy in the country.

Pudsey is a relic from what seemed like the hundreds of school cakesales we baked for , all in a good cause of course but it always seemed the kids got bored after the first batch and then it was Mum that was in the kitchen rolling out and cutting biscuits late into the night at times.

Biggest group of all is the Christmas cutters, I am a self confessed Christmasaholic and numerous cutters for the gingerbread that we seemed to spend all of December making. We made biscuits for presents several years - at least six different types and they were very well received......but we always had to make double because they seemed to disappear before being packaged up.

So many memories......not many ended up in the bin but they will all be lovingly packed away again tomorrow. They will be ready and waiting for the day in the future when my grandchildren want to bake with nanny Bev - but not for a while yet I hope!