Gingerbread houses, Year 5

The Christmas season was so busy that I didn't have a chance before now to post any pictures of our annual gingerbread house decorating day. Last year the kids decided to make one large gingerbread house but this year they decided to go back to little individual houses for each of them.

 

 

Once again we had just plenty of leftover Halloween candy to decorate with.

 

Wow, it's hard to believe that we've been doing gingerbread houses for 5 years now. I do believe that enjoy making gingerbread houses more than Christmas decorating!

 

Our "adopted" grandma Lavon came to decorate with us too. She brought tons of candy with her too. We were so overloaded with candy that I still have tons left a month later!

 

I wonder how many more years of decorating I'll be able to get out of my kids? I have a feeling that I may only get a couple more years out of my boys. I think they may feel like they are getting too old to do this kind of stuff.

 

Thanks Grandma Lavon for decorating with us!

Santa Success and my first Private Party!

This past week I taught two painting classes in one day, one in the morning and one in the evening. During both sessions I led the ladies, and one very brave teenage boy, in painting a Santa Claus. 

Our painting parties have become so popular that we outgrew our library and had to move to our town's Senior Center next door. 

We had some crazy Kansas State fans that painted Santa's iconic hat purple! I thought that was great but I told them I would absolutely refuse to help them draw Willy the Wildcat. I have to uphold my allegiance to Purdue Pete you know!! 

Altogether we had 23 Santas created on Tuesday. One woman even attended both sessions and she's planning on painting a Santa for each of her daughters for Christmas. 

With this group I led my first pair of sisters in painting together, the two ladies on the right. Talk about fun! Those two were egging one another on and laughing all evening. I get to lead these two next week too as the lady in the middle is hosting my first private party! We are both really excited! 

Leading these painting parties have been so much fun. You'd think that after leading a class for two or three hours I'd be exhausted but I find myself coming home after these classes excited and energized! 

What I really enjoy is that so many different and individual paintings can come out of the very same instructions. 

I'm finding too that some of these women who are attending these classes keep coming back again and again. I even asked them why and some of their answers were surprising. Some said they do it because it helps out our town library and it's local. It's nice to have something to do in our tiny town and not having to drive an hour to do something. Some ladies enjoy it as a challenge that is forcing them out of their comfort zone. Others have realized that they can paint and it was something that they never thought they could do. I've always been convinced though that ANYONE can create art!! I've also found that it seems to be a really fun way for women to spend evenings together. Most evenings are filled with just as much relaxing and laughing as creative painting! 

My library ladies, that's what I call my core group of women who return time after time, have already told me they are expecting a painting next month. The librarian in our town has been choosing the paintings so I'm excited to see what she chooses! 

P.S. - Next Friday I'm doing my first private painting party at my friend's house and we'll be painting a Grain Elevator at Sunset! I'm am beyond excited!!!

Merry Christmas Morning!!

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas morning! 

We were cold here with a bit of snow and a LOT of wind and Christmas morning here was quite entertaining, but I think any house with kids probably had an entertaining Christmas morning. 

(Quick cute story....on Christmas Eve DR and I were tucking Yahoo into bed. After reading with her and tucking her under the covers and the required number of kisses and hugs she looked at us both quite seriousl and said, "Now QUICK run to your bed and go to sleep!" As if Mom and Dad going to sleep would make Christmas come sooner! )

Yip has been wearing these slippers non-stop since Christmas, seriously I can't see how he can actually walk in them. He was easy to shop for this year; bear slippers and duct tape was pretty much all he wanted. 

Check out the look on that boy's face when he opened up a roll of 5 bright new duct tapes!!! 

Funny!! 

Miss Yahoo too was easy to shop for as well, anything pink and Princess! I searched Amazon until I found a reasonably priced metal tiara, one that wouldn't snap the first day of wearing and playing. I'm so happy I did because she has already bent it much farther without breaking than a plastic tiara would have survived. 

Now I am a tomboy and though I did wear dresses as a little girl I was never much for pink, glittery, frilly things. Yahoo is MUCH different than I am. I try to avoid surrounding her with over the top girlyness. 

My sisters, however, seem to think their only job is to help make Yahoo as girly as possible! 

Oh. My. Goodness.

I don't know what my sister did to that tule skirt but I had glitter all over my ankles! 

One of the coolest and most creative gifts the boys received this year was from my sister who sent them an entire box of PVC pipes and connectors. It's like a giant building set. Very cool! 

We actually had two Christmases on Christmas day. Since this was the first time we weren't traveling to spend time with family I've been receiving boxes for the last couple weeks from them. My brother Mountain Man was able to come over later that afternoon when we opened the second half of Christmas presents. Whew! I'm glad that's over. I felt like my living room exploded twice! I didn't take nearly as many photos of the day as I would have liked, I was too busy enjoying my family. 

Santa and Papa Doug were especially good to Yip and Yap this year with gifts of air pistol and rifle and pocket knives! My house has also been covered in wood shavings since Tuesday, HA! More on that tomorrow! 

Gingerbread House Year 4; the biggest and best yet!

This has become my favorite Christmas tradition with my kids; decorating gingerbread houses. In years past we've glued together graham crackers and decorated small houses.  

But this year I decided we needed to get a bit more sophisticated and challenge ourselves a bit. 

I found some large cardboard and hot glued a house together real quick, the chimney is out of proportion but it worked. 

Then I pulled out leftover Halloween candy from the refrigerator and Christmas candy from a parade we went to a couple weeks ago. We had a LOT more candy than I thought, surely more than enough. 

The boys decided they needed to separate the candy by colors and then they went at it! 

While the boys worked on the house, Yahoo and I decorated ice cream cones to look like trees. 

Surprisingly, a very small amount of candy was eaten!

The only candy I ended up buying for this project was licorice for the chimney. 

One hour later our house was done!! 

And there wasn't ONE piece of candy left in the house....they used it all!! 

LOL...they even used some Halloween suckers with bony hands! 

See the one sticking out of the chimney? Yip says that it's Santa's hand after he fell in the fireplace fire. 

During our "creative" building process Yip suggested that next year we make a skyscraper gingerbread house! How cool would that be?? I've been envisioning what this yearly tradition might grow into the older my kids get. Might we start making an entire village? Will we have to invest a large chunk of our Christmas budget into candy for decorating? Will our gingerbread houses morph into entire room installations? The possibilities are endless!!!