Gingerbread houses & paper Xmas trees

A., Z. and I made our gingerbread house yesterday. Usually we buy a kit which comes with the gingerbread already baked, candy, and the last few years the royal icing already made (some kits have a powder you have to mix up). A number of years ago I had bought an iron gingerbread house mold but had never used it. It was always easier to just use the kit. Nothing really changed in that regard, but this year I felt like just once I wanted to make one from scratch. So I did. The decorating part is a group effort, but I do all the prep work beforehand.



The good things about making our own gingerbread house:

-It smells really good when you go near it. The kit houses don't smell like anything.
-The size of the walls from the mold are taller than the kits we have used which makes for a nicer look and more room to decorate.
-Buying and using the different candies was fun and Z. really liked sneaking pieces of everything (except the spiced gumdrops which she hated- never thought I'd find a candy she didn't like!)
-There was some pride in having made the whole thing from beginning to end.

The bad things about making our own gingerbread house:

-Very time consuming! I made the dough one day and put it in the fridge. Then I spent half a day baking the various pieces. Then I had to make the royal icing (thank goodness for meringue powder, easy and fast). I had forgotten to check the confectioner's sugar supply but luckily we had exactly the right amount of sugar. Then we had to put the house pieces together, which took forever.
-The house pieces are much more fragile than the kit pieces. We broke the wall in three or four places on our first try at putting them together. So we repaired it with icing and used the other wall.
-The house pieces were very "rustic". Z. asked me what that meant and I pointed to our unglazed terracotta French tile kitchen floor (done by previous owners) and said, like that. The first batch I pressed the pieces of dough into the mold and the last two I used a rolling pin and rolled it out first then put it in the mold, patched the bare spots, and rolled again. It was negligibly better than the pressing. There were holes, big ones and tiny ones.

Next year, we'll go back to the kits but will buy some supplemental candies to decorate with.

Another crafty thing I've done this past week is paper Xmas trees. I got the idea from a friend on my mom's list who got it from one woman's blog, who got it from another woman's blog (there are instructions on her blog).



I used some Better Homes and Garden magazines to make mine. I got a free subscription somewhere and will flip through the magazine and put it right in the recycling. Since I was behind in my magazine reading (surprise, surprise) I had two. The pages are very thin, the magazine a good thickness, and lots of ads for some color. They were really easy to make and look kind of cool on our living room coffee table (a dark brown that is almost black).



Soon I'll be heading out in the bitter cold to what is usually Open Studio for a holiday card making workshop at the Wellness Community. I go every year and usually have about enough time to make 4 cards. I make both a Xmas and a Hanukkah card for both Z. and A. I am completely blank as to what I will make them this year, but then again I am usually completely blank when I go every year and somehow come up with something.