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!

About this time of year interest is renewed in lessons and information on Jesus Christ for Christmas events, lessons, etc. It’s about this time that I start getting more requests for my slide show I did several years ago on the Savior, and I always run into snags with music copyrights. It’s hard for people who download the slide show to understand why I can’t just send them the music files I used. So I decided this year I’d find a way to fix that.

Thanks to an amazing new iMac and its accompanying software, I’m happy to share a new slide show and a revised copy of the original that includes music that can be shared legally. Both shows run around 20 minutes and combine artwork, scripture and music in a powerful presentation on Christ. I have a new Slide Show Page with all the details and various download formats for anyone interested.

I’m excited to have found some solutions and hope it can help others enjoy the Spirit of the season.

November is already here. I can’t believe it. Here’s the second installment of Halloween fun at our house.

We carved some pumpkins on Monday night and a few more on Saturday:

I need to point out that this year Taylor was completely independent on drawing on and cutting out his pumpkin faces. He still requested help gutting the pumpkin as that totally grosses this kid out! But he sure had fun doing the rest himself. In fact, the next day I found he’d cut two eyes into another pumpkin all by himself. Not surprising, he’d done nothing more than cut the eyes out! He also made me put a big eye face on the mini pumpkin I put in the big mean pumpkin’s mouth. I wanted to put “x’s” on it but he said that was too mean and this little pumpkin had to show that it was going to escape. He’s got heart, that kid.

Taylor had a class party on Friday. His sister’s class are their reading buddies and they came down to decorate pumpkins with them. He opted to be a pirate for the school day because it was easier to put on and met the guidelines with no masks or makeup. He’s still a wickedly cute little pirate says I.

And here’s how the costumes turned out. This one is Cidnie’s, I created the pattern and used $1.50/yd clearance fabric at Walmart. I was pretty happy with the $6.00 investment for her entire costume!

Tay was most patient getting his face painted. It went better and faster than I’d hoped! Although I sure had a hard time finding him in the dark without seeing that platinum blond hair and pale skin!!

Mother Confessor meets Darth Maul:

We had a fun time Halloween night visiting with friends and neighbors while eating and handing out candy. The kids had a ball playing with friends and collecting bags full of treats. All in all, a most successful Halloween!

The Halloween craze continues to run rampant in our neck of the woods. On our nightly walks we see nearly as many outdoor lights and displays as we do at Christmas. It’s truly a ’spooktacular’ phenomenon. My son tells me all the time that we don’t have enough stuff on our house. But we have more than I ever thought we would. Kids have a way of helping make sure that happens. I thought we were doing pretty well, I mean we have our ghost in the tree:

Some tombstones, a couple pumpkins, a skeleton, a witch’s broom and one of those annoying noise maker coffin boxes:

All are accompanied by a red/orange glow from the colored bulbs in the light fixtures, and I was especially proud that my plug in jack-o-lantern worked with my plug extension twisted into the light socket directly above it. Last year he sat hidden by the door, this year he’s front and center without an extension chord. However, Taylor wasn’t so easily impressed with my engineering feat. Lucky for me, he tends to lighten up when it gets close enough to Halloween to carve and light our pumpkins. *wink*

Halloween got an early start for us this year, the first weekend of the month to be specific. Cidnie decided she wanted to find and color some Halloween coloring pages. So she went to the computer and started printing out pages to color.

Taylor joined in the fun and then we cut them out and hung them on the mirror.

Last week we had fun making some Halloween decorations that Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids for their birthdays. We watched some of the movie The Labyrinth while making the skeleton. I still love that movie.

The month was already filling with Halloween things and then the cookie phantom and boo ghost landed on our door. So last night we made treats with the kids; two kinds of cookies and some chocolate dipped pretzel sticks. I was so happy with the way the cookie cutter cookies turned out that I wanted to share the recipe.

Basic Cookie Cutter Cookies

3/4 C Sugar
1/2 (1 stick) butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 C Flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons pear butter (I put in the pear butter because the mix was too crumbly. You could easily substitute apple sauce for the pear butter. )

My only complaint with this fun activity in past years is the need to make copies of stuff to give with the treats. In the past, I’ve ended up making my own version to print out (I promise to get all those in their many varieties up on my file section soon) and then I give extra copies to the families we share with so they don’t have the headache. But this year, the boo ghost smartened up and came with a website address to go get the information and picture from.

I have two weeks left to figure out costumes. Cidnie wants to be the confessor from the TV show “Legend of the Seeker” and Taylor wants to be Darth Maul.

So far I have Cidnie’s knives:

Looks like the sewing machine will be used for more than humanitarian quilt tops! Hopefully, I’ll find enough success to want to blog it when it’s done.

So that wraps up our Halloween 2009 Part I. In a few weeks I’ll have one full of the pumpkin carving, trunk-or-treats and Halloween night parties. *wipes brow* Is it Thanksgiving yet?

Just FYI - this is the only kind of snow for me! *wink*

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This year the kids decided to do a gingerbread train instead of houses. So we started a couple of days ago making the dough. While it chilled, we created our own pattern and tested it taping the paper templates together. Then we rolled out the dough, cut out the pieces and baked them. As you can see Taylor was very excited to help with this part.

I’m not sure what he had more fun doing, rolling, cutting or building flour mountain ranges. *grin*

Tonight it was on to decorating:

And the final result was one we were all happy with!

For past years of fun check these links out:
Successful Gingerbread Creations
2007 Gingerbread Houses
A Week Before Christmas
The Gingerbread Boy
2006 Gingerbread Houses

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The Christmas season has always been one of my favorites. As a child I couldn’t help feeling that some of those songs were just for me. Seeing beautiful light displays and feeling the wonder of decorated trees remains at the top of my list for favorites.

This year’s festivities got off to an early start with having family in town for Thanksgiving. We took in Zoolights on Thanksgiving night and the temple lights just a few nights later.

Last night the kids and I finished putting up Christmas decorations. I remember how much I loved doing this as a child, it was like bringing a little magic into your home. We had to twist dad’s arm, but we even got him to help us put up some outside lights this weekend too. It’s already the second week of December, but I’m finally feeling like the holidays are really here. The kids are hot on my heels to get the gingerbread baked so we can make some new creations this year. I’m moving ahead with a lot of projects, but feeling the pressure to finish a few that I really care about in time to get shipped. Why do I always do that to myself? *eye roll*

Speaking of which, I’ll leave with my favorite decoration and get back to the task of projects.

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