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Gingerbread Houses

22 Dec

Okay, so technically they are Graham Cracker Houses.

For the first day of Christmas Vacation, the kiddie pies and I made Gingerbread Houses. They have been begging to make them since December 1st, but I put them off because

A: I knew we would have a new baby and be unable to visit friends. We would need fun things to do during those days before Christmas. (Hopefully all the new toys keep them busy after Christmas.)

B: The lazy part of me hoped Aunt Amanda would be here to make the Gingerbread houses with them.

Sadly, Aunt Amanda doesn’t get to visit. But reason A was enough.

Last year, the houses kept collapsing during construction, causing my kiddie pies much frustration. So this year, I braved the danger of serious burns and melted sugar to glue the pieces together first.

I escaped with only one small blister! Yay! My prefab houses did restrict the creativity factor, but I think that was worth it because we skipped the weeping and wailing caused by runaway roofs and wayward walls.

Here are the kiddie pies creating their art. Cutie Pie was happy just because there was candy all over the table. Peach Pie and Pumpkin Pie were jazzed about having multiple colors of frosting.

**Speaking of frosting, I found a Royal Icing recipe that called for lemon juice. Best tasting royal icing ever. (Which isn’t saying much. I’ve always hated royal icing. But this was tolerable.)
1 egg white, beaten until stiff.
3 1/2 cups (1 pound) powdered sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp cream of tartar.

Cherry Pie spent so much time creating a garden around her house that she forgot to decorate the house itself. I like how she thinks. Check out her rose bushes and the sand box:

Blueberry’s decorating rule of thumb seems to be cover all surfaces.

More houses:

Seconds after I took these pictures, all the houses met with violent ends. Who knew butter knives could be so deadly?

New Dress, Random stuff

6 Oct

I love love love to watch Project Runway. Since we don’t get cable TV (or any TV) I either show up at a friend’s house to watch it, or my sisters get a hold of a whole season at once and we marathon it. Now my daughters occasionally design fashion outfits and have runway shows. Peach Pie designed this new dress for me. I thought it was a giraffe at first, but she explained that the “spots” were actually apples and that it was a dress. Then it was all so clear-including the spacious allowance for my growing baby bump. One thing I can say about my girl, she knows how to design for real women. Something those kids on Project Runway don’t always know how to do.

Also, I bet you have all been wondering what we do at our house on a rainy Saturday Morning besides design high fashion. Here’s the scoop.

Bubba likes to make armor and weapons. Cutie Pie likes chase him, screaming, “kill, Kill!” in true warrior princess form.

The rest of the Pies like to make things with play dough. My super cute nephew, CandyBar, was visiting us while his mother was in the hospital bringing forth a new little brother for him. When he wasn’t on the table, CandyBar was playing with the toy horses we have in the animal box. Those horses kept him busy all day.

Monday was a no school day (teacher meetings or something) The girls have wanted to have a “Tangled” day–a day where they get to do all the things that Rapunzel does during her song. So Monday we invited a few friends over and had our Tangled day. We made pottery with bake-able clay, painted, read books, baked apple pies, had lunch, ballet, and painted faces with makeup.

Surprisingly, the girls all voted to skip mopping, sweeping, polishing, clean-up and laundry. I got to do all those ones, myself. And they wondered why we ran out of time and didn’t get to do chess, ventriloquy, candle making, more painting, and sew a dress…

Now they all are begging to have home school. I think they think home school would be like Tangled Day. I’m afraid it would be too….

And if you are looking for cute Halloween ideas or cute things to make for boys, check out my new favorite blog to read: The Train To Crazy Don’t you just want to go get a crochet hook right this second?!!

Happy Father’s Day

7 Jul

Okay, I know it has been nearly a month since Father’s Day. But I want to share what we did, cause it was AWESOME!!

Copying this idea from alphamom.com, which I first saw on homemade by jill, we made SUPER SNACKS for our very own SUPER HERO.

My Printer is broken–as in, it makes a terrifying shreek when I turn it on and then comes up with ERROR 5#@$^)%3582#$)(@#&$91802q1 and refuses to print.

Actually, my printer has been awesome for 4 years. I just miss it alot now that it doesn’t work.

Anyway, because of the printer malfunction, we couldn’t use the already made printables (origionally made by Jordan of O Happy Day), so we had to make our own. I think we did a pretty amazing job.

The best part was the Happy Father’s Day cards that Bubba and Magpie made up all by themselves. My kids are awesome.

Hopefully, these snacks have kept our SuperHero happy and full of energy while he is off fighting villains and stuff so we can have food to eat and a roof over our heads. He isn’t perfect, but he does his best for us every day and that is all a woman can reasonably ask for, after all.

Serendipity

13 Apr

Sometimes If I just click on tabs on the side of blogs, I end up somewhere cool.

This lady did a blog last year-12 crafts til Christmas and shared what she did.

and she made a PDF file of how to make a Pillow Buddy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love her forever.

and my children will love her forever once I’ve purchased fabric and created these for all of them.

They’ll love me forever also.

Now, do I make them for Easter, Birthdays or Christmas??? (listed in order of nearness in time. Probably Christmas is the only realistic choice–but not the fun choice.)

My To Be List

9 Apr

Wordle: MyBeList

Have you ever heard of Wordle?

I just found it thanks to Pink&Green Momma, though apparently my children have known about it “forever” and just didn’t think to share with me. Wordle allows you to create word cloud art. You just type in the words you want–type the word more than once to make it bigger. Then you get to play with the font and color.

Beware. It is addicting.

Wordle: MyBeList2

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