More Gingerbread...

I Love Gingerbread Houses!

Our family makes gingerbread houses almost every year.

Not just the graham cracker or packaged variety, but the

completely from scratch, Grandma's Old Fashioned Molasses

kind of gingerbread. It's a lot of work. But the house smells

delicious. For days afterwords! Everyone gets to put their

best building and decorating skills to work. It's fun to see

what the kids will come up with each year. Lani and Diane

wanted to get together, so Lani stopped by with Brody on

Monday. Brody was so excited to make a house!

Devin worked into the evening so he put his house together

after the tumult had died down. Nice use of royal icing.

Josh and Katie have a fancy candy cane fence and a rather cute
Santa on the roof.

Diane and Dennis put a cute candy cane arch leading into the

pathway.

We all loved Eric's nice gumdrop tower-like chimney.

Traditionally, we don't eat them until Christmas. They're

actually pretty tasty too!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

There's just something so cheerful about a yard full of

Christmas lights during the darkest part of Winter!

The porch gives off a nice golden glow with the lights

wrapped around. See the tree in the window?

Devin got some nice pictures with his fancy new camera.

So Christmasy!

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree!

The boys and I were on our own getting a tree this year,

Keith was putting in a long day of work on our tree buying day.

We took off in Devin's truck for the McLean Rd. Tree Farm.

Most of the trees were either too big, like this one the boys

had to get a running jump at to get their hats up to the top,

or too small.

Hey that's a Charlie Brown tree if I ever saw one!

Ahh, this one's just right.

Let's cut it down!

And haul it back to the truck...

And tie 'er down real good. Devin's got some good lashing

skills. We'll get it home and the real work of getting it into

the stand and making sure it's nice and even begins!

A few projects around the house

I found these cute sconces and put them up. They were

solid black though, and looked too stark in the living room.

So I grabbed some bronze craft paint and a sponge and

softened the color dramatically.

I really love the way they turned out.

Hooray! I've been waiting years to replace the sliding glass

door with broken seals so it looked dirty even when it was clean.

I love the way it looks now, with the white framing

and trim, and the white grids. It's beautiful!

I overhauled the shelves in my bedroom.

What a difference. This area is no longer an eyesore.


And one last picture showing the new window in the front hall.
The white frames are so much more attractive than the
brown metal frames we had throughout the house.
This window is just clear glass. It replaces a golden tinted
obscure glass window. This is so much more beautiful!
Thanks to Keith for all the hard labor he put in replacing
all the windows. I love it!

The Dent in the Wall...

Here is Eric's very accurate reinactment of the incident which

put a large dent in the hall wall. It started innocently

enough by my suggesting that he'd better get off of the couch

and get to bed since it was nearly 11:00. He stood up,

walked into the front hall and collapsed! I heard the thud

from the kitchen, so I happened to look over and see him

conked out on the floor! I rushed over to him and woke

him up. He seemed to be fine initially, just a little confused

about what he was doing on the floor!

A little later, while eating the snack I forced upon him,
he noticed that his knuckle on his left hand was bloody.
It was then that we checked out the wall and saw it.
The Really Big Hole!


I think he was actually pretty proud of it. It's not every day
you can punch a hole in the wall and get sympathy instead
of gettin in trouble.

Look at the size of that thing! We've waited a number of
weeks, months actually, to repair it. It's quite sentimental.
I assured Eric (and his dad) that we could take pictures
and blog it and then it would be ok to patch it up!