I’m still not sure how it happens. It’s like a thief in the night who sneaks in and announces another year has passed. I read once that growing older is like a roll of toilet paper, the older you get the faster it goes. I’m seeing the truth in that silly observation! I’m pretty sure we just did this and yet birthday time found it’s way to me again. I’m just celebrating that while 40 grows ever closer it’s still not here yet!

Yesterday was a great day. Blake took the day off and pampered me with great food, a new mouse for my computer and some wheat to try out my new Wonder Mill grinder. Maybe I’ll even find the energy to try it out this afternoon. Other highlights include my kids letting me sleep in, new earrings from my in-laws, picking my first successful squash from my garden, finding flowers at my door, many fantastic birthday wishes from friends and visits with family on the phone. We also started the day by visiting our newest family addition, Dexter. He’s a tiny little pup that will be ready to come home at the end of January.

I found the house yesterday. Today I can just sit and enjoy it clean! And then this morning I got the crazy idea to do another drastic hair cut. So I took the morning off my usual things and did a cut and color, pedicure and manicure on myself. It was heaven. Now if I could just figure out how to clone myself so I could enjoy all of it without being the one doing it too!

Here’s a few recent pictures and the ones from today:

The tree is up:

Night treats and time together:

And a special treat of mini golf and a Cardinal’s game with Grandma & Grandpa:

It’s that time again! This year the kids decided to do a Santa’s Village for our annual gingerbread creation. My daughter requested that we do it when her grandma and grandpa were in town so they could do it with us. Here’s how it turned out:

The recipe and other years of gingerbread creations can be found here.

Here’s how it went down this year:

Wednesday afternoon I sat down to work out a pattern for the village. I’d decided to try a Santa’s Workshop, candy shoppe, sled and big Christmas tree for the village. I started with a blank piece of paper and some basic image ideas I scratched out.

Then I moved into creating a pattern and taping it together for testing.

I made the dough on Wednesday night but couldn’t get to it to roll and bake until Thursday. The good news is that it required very little flour for the rolling process. The bad news is that it was really stiff and I had to work it a bit before I cold successfully roll it. Therefore, my *note to self* is to not leave it refrigerated in the future for more than the suggested hour.

Thursday was rolling, cutting and baking:

If working with straight edges is important, you’ll want to take a moment to trim the baked pattern pieces when they’re fresh out of the oven while they’re warm and pliable. I personally like the rounded edges and know they’re all going to be covered with frosting anyway so do all my cutting before baking.

Friday morning I glued the houses together with royal frosting and later that afternoon we went to decorating:

Here’s a few more pictures of the finished results:

It’s always a fun thing to do, but I’m glad it only comes around once a year. I’m ‘gingerbreaded’ out!