Thursday Tidbits: Gingerbread Fun!

With so much going on during the holidays we hadn't got to decorate our gingerbread house until Christmas Day.

I hadn't planned on even buying a gingerbread house kit because last years attempt went horribly awry. The walls and roof kept collapsing, there was much frustration and a few choice words on my part and we ended up throwing in the towel and just eating the pieces as they were. However, while shopping at Giant Tiger a few weeks ago with the munchkins I saw that they had gingerbread houses marked down from ten bucks to two dollars in the clearance bin. The best part? They were "PRE-ASSEMBELLED" houses, with all the fixings to decorate it included. (Second best part? A free pair of New Year's margarita-shaped, glittery eyeglasses with purchase!) It came with a bag of gum drops, a bag of colored candy beads, two bags of white frosting, and some candy canes. The house itself was already put together so all we had to do was decorate it. I figured it would be a fun little activity for the kids to do together. I kept putting off actually doing it because I was either to exhausted to bother or I just didn't want to deal with frosting everywhere and the sugar-induced craziness that followed.

Finally, on the afternoon of Christmas Day the kids asked me if they could decorate it. Since the holidays were almost over and the house was already a mess from that mornings festivities, I didn't really have any excuse for saying no. I sat them down at the coffee table with aprons on to protect their new clothes that they insisted on wearing. Chanel had not only her new clothes on but also her new coat from Old Navy that she absolutely refused to take off. I figured icing couldn't be too hard to wash off and was for the most part right, although I learned the hard way that once icing has hardened it is not so easy to get it off of a microfibre sofa. I armed them each with a small bag of icing and some candies and let them go to town.                           

An untimely demise...

 Coder had a blast decorating it and had the most adorable look of concentration on his face the entire time. He had his tongue sticking out of the corner of his oh-so-serious little face, trying to line the candies up just so. Nelly, on the other hand, couldn't have cared less. She was concentrating purely on ingesting the decor. All in all, I would say that the gingerbread house was a success. There were no tears and barely any fighting (except when Nelly would eat a candy that Coder had just painstakingly applied) and the end result was totally cute. We displayed it proudly on the kitchen counter for all of one day until Nelly decided she wanted to relocate it and dropped it trying to pull it off of the counter. There were tears for a minute or so until they realized the could eat the candy now. It was a fun activity that kept them for the most part entertained for half hour or so and it was sweet to be able to display their handiwork, but I think I will skip the gingerbread house next year. It is a little to annoying for my liking, what with the candies repeatedly falling off and trying to get them to decorate with them not eat them. I think next year we'll do gingerbread men instead. Less room for error that way. So what kinds of activities did you do with your children this holiday season?

Simple Pinecone Door Decor

With Christmas just mere days away I couldn't help but notice that my house was lacking as far as decorations go. 

Sure I had lights up and the tree but that is pretty much it. I was feeling pretty festive and was brainstorming easy ways to add some finishing touches to the house. As I pawed through my ornament box (courtesy of my mother-in-law) I came across some adorable faux acorn ornaments. I knew I wanted to use them for something but I wasn't quite sure what. Then I remembered a cute idea I had seen a while back. Don't ask me where I saw it because I honestly have no sweet clue. The pine cone craft I had seen had them hanging at different lengths with the ends gathered and tied in a knot, so it was a bunch of pine cones hanging from ribbon. I decided to try my own variation of the craft and instead hang them one at a time at different lengths. I apologize for the crappy photo quality. I have once again had to resort to using my sons Vtech kids camera until I can pick up some better batteries. This camera really doesn't do it justice. It looks so much beter and more vibrant in real life. The ribbon is a bright red and the tops of the cones have green leaves and red bows, but you can't really tell from the pictures. It is an easy way to add some sparkle to your door and is a welcome change from the standard green wreath. For more inspiration I managed to find a how-to for the exact same craft as the one that inspired me. You can check that out HERE                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

All you need for this insanely simple project is:

• four pine cones  (Or as many as you wish.You can also use either real or fake pine cones, you can pick fake ones up at your local dollar or craft store for a couple bucks).
• Ribbon (Again the color and width are up to you).
• Scissors
• Thumbtack or tape (Whichever you prefer to hang the ribbons. I used tape myself cuz the tacks were to hard to push into the top of the door).

Step 1) Cut a strand of ribbon for each ornament. Leave a couple extra inches past how long you want it to be so you can hang it over the door.



Step 2) Tie one end of each strand of ribbon to the top of each pine cone. (This was easy for me because these cones already had loops at the top of them but you could also glue the ribbon in place with a glue gun).

Step 3) Arrange them over the top of the door so that they hang down the front of the door. Play around with the spacing and different lengths until you are satisfied then either pin or tape them in place on the back of the door at the top.

**If you are feeling particularly ambitious there are many other variations to this craft and ways to further embellish it. You can dip the pine cones in glitter, spray paint them, add flowers, beaded strands, lace. The possibilities are endless. Feel free to put your own creative spin on it. This craft is going to be added to my Christmas lineup for the coming years but I am definitely going to gussy it up even further next time with glitter and some different color ribbons. This would also be adorable as a fall/autumn craft or you could change up the ribbons to fit almost any holiday (Pale yellow, blue and pink with white glitter cones for Easter, green ribbons with green glitter cones for Saint.Patty's, orange and black for Halloween, etc). Please share your own twists that you added!!


Enjoy your new simple and frugal decoration!!

Deckin' the halls...

One of the highlights of the holiday season for me has always been trimming the tree. It doesn't feel like the holidays have oficially begun until there is a Christmas tree twinkling away in the living room. I always put a lot of thought into my color scheme and I enjoy changing it up year to year. Previous years I had settled for a measly almost six foot tree but luckily my amazing mother-in-law-to-be gave us an eight footer this year instead. I had always wanted a bigger tree but was too cheap to buy a new one so this was great. However, imagine my disappointment when I searched the house for my box of ornaments and came up empty handed. Apparently, somewhere between moving out of our old house and into this one they went M.I.A. I was pretty upset because we had several items of sentimental value in there, including Nelly's "Baby's 1st Christmas" stocking and ornaments that were given to us from various family members. Plus, a lot of the ornaments were still brand new from my shopping trip last Christmas when I decided to change up my entire color scheme two weeks before Christmas. Luckily, I managed to find some surprisingly nice ornaments from Dollarama for 1-2$. I chose blue and silver, the same color scheme I had used two years earlier, because I had really liked the look of it. My mother in law gave me a bunch of decorations as well so now I have more than I did before I lost them.

We rounded up the family and let the tree trimming festivities begin! It basically consisted of my children sticking ornaments in random places all around the bottom half of the tree, as high as they could reach, and then me moving them somewhere else when they weren't looking. This went on until the tree was (somewhat) to my liking. I then had to keep reminding them to leave the ornaments where they were because they insisted on rearranging them every two seconds.I was also a little disappointed because all I could get my hands on were multi-colored lights and they kind of threw off my theme of silver and blue. I would have preferred white lights but i guess beggars can't be choosers. We hit another obstacle about half way through when I realized I didn't have enough tinsel to finish the tree. Luckily I thought fast and supplemented the rest with silver ribbon. Everything was all fine and dandy until it came to the finale, placing the star on top, which of course turned into a fight between the munchkins. We had to let Coder put it on then take it back off and give Nelly a turn. Despite some minor hiccups I would say, overall, it was a success. This is what the end result looks like: (Disregard the very bottom of the tree, Nelly felt compelled to try to yank the ribbon and ornaments back off once we were done and anything within her reach was fair game to her)

When we were done it still felt like something was missing so with the leftover silver ribbon I whipped up a few super quick, matching bows for the tree.

Then I played around with my camera's Macro setting a bit and came out with these pictures of the tree which I LOVE and think look super cool.

 YAY HEARTS<3

With the leftover strand of multi-colored lights I decided to do my kitchen entryway. I added some rainbow bulbs to finish the look off.

It looked very nice until Coder decided to hold an impromtu hockey game in my living room. Things got a little out of hand and the next thing I know I hear the very distinct sound of glass breaking.

I was a little miffed as I really liked those bulbs and there were orginally three but another one was broken while we were unpacking them from the box. So now I am down to one lone bulb hanging in the center. Ahh well, I tried.

I am going Christmas shopping tomorrow (I know, I know. I am a last minute kind of person. Every year I vow to get it done early and then every single year I wait until a week or two before Christmas.) and there are still a few more decorations I need to grab including stockings for the family. We lost ours during the move, which really sucks because we each had our own personalized ones, so now I need to pick up some replacements. I also want to grab a can of fake snow and a roll of electric tape so I can do up the windows. I will post a tutorial on how to do it when I actually get around to it, probably on Christmas Eve the way I am going. I am planning to ship the munchkins to Nanny's house while I do my Christmas shopping, as they obviously can't come. I made that mistake last year and it was hell on earth. I will be posting my top gift picks in the next few days. My kids are still young enough that I don't have to worry about them stumbling upon my blog and ruining the surprise. Although I am sure I don't have many more years of that luxury seeing as I know seven year old kids with Facebook profiles. I do't know about you but I love seeing how other people celebrate Christmas, what traditions they have (and stealing the ones I like for my own family), what their tree looks like, what gifts they buy. It is like a guilty pleasure of mine. So feel free to share your own gift ideas, traditions and whatnot. **Check back soon for a complete list of my top gift picks for 2011** Adios, Amigos:)