Happy New Year with a Gingerbread Snoopy’s Doghouse

I’m a bit late with my New Year’s Greetings, but that’s nothing new! 🙂  (At least it’s still January)  Here’s Snoopy, apparently fast asleep atop his doghouse, but in reality he’s thinking deep thoughts about the new year, and wishing the best for you and yours in 2014.We did a gingerbread decorating day with my sister and all of our kids, and after the frosting stopped flying, and the kids rumbled off to their next activity, I assembled this gingerbread doghouse for cookie Snoopy.  I used the birdhouse pattern that I printed from the instructions here, and just trimmed in the roof sections a bit and cut out the doorway.  Then decorated with royal icing and nonpareil snowflakes.  Snoopy is such a comforting image from my childhood!   Here’s Snoopy’s doghouse with some Christmas lights that I swiped from my nephew…..They didn’t stay on too long when my nephew finally noticed them….! I just love gingerbread!!  YUM!  I usually end up making some in February, too, not just for Christmas!  Anyways, have a great New Year!

A home-made Christmas

“Christmas time is here….” that’s the theme from A Charlie Brown Christmas, I can hear it playing inside my head.  There’s something cozy and comforting about watching Charlie Brown and Snoopy’s Christmas cartoon (that’s older than I am! haha!) while snow falls outside.  The kids love watching it to.  Is it because it makes us think back to simpler times?  Remember the sad little tree that Charlie Brown finds, and the kids give it a bit of love and spruce it up?

I really don’t know why I’m mentioning that cartoon, it just popped into my mind, and seemed to fit (in my mind anyway) with the home-made Christmas idea.  This year I was trying to make a bunch of home-made stuff for Christmas, instead of buying new things.  I keep finding amazing ideas online that I wanted to try, but have run right out of time!!  So I thought I’d post some photos of the things that I did get done because I know it will make me feel better to see the loveliness on my blog, instead of surrounded by the boxes and mess and clutter that are here in my house!!  (No I am not going to post a photo of the mess that surrounds the decorating…that would ruin all the loveliness, even though it would show my real life!)

Our Christmas tree is a “throw and go!” tree, as my son called it: throw the ornaments on and then go away!  I let the kids do most of the decorating with only one box of ornaments….I don’t know why.  I guess I was too exhausted to pull anything else out, and they were happy to do a “candy cane tree”.  (Ok, I did buy something new, those wood & fabric words for a buck each!).  This is the first time we’ve ever had a color-coordinated tree.  So that was nice for a change! ;) Here are some ideas I found online to print out… Advent things, Cookie things (for teacher gifts and just for us to eat on a cold winter’s evening), trying out some new recipes…. Ornament things,   Gift things…..I just had to snap some photos of the presents my daughter wrapped, they are so cute!!  She wrote out all the tags with our names on in English and in Japanese characters! And a few anniversary things, Our six year old photographer took this 19th anniversary portrait of us, we had just kissed at 19 hours and 19 minutes on the 19th of December for our 19th anniversary!  Now that’s home-made stuff!!

So that’s a few glimpses of our kinda home-made Christmas decorating and traditions and stuff….really, our life is not as together-looking as it seems in this blog…..I just have to mention that so that I don’t feel like I’m lying too much with all the perfect-looking photos.  I have perfection ideals in my head, but just can’t make them work out….so I take photos of the stuff that turns out…and once-in-a-while of the things that don’t turn out!  🙂

Merry Christmas to you!!!

Sugar Plum Snowflake Ballerina Fairies

That’s what I’m calling them!  “While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads…” mixed with snowflake ballerinas and the nutcracker’s Sugar Plum fairy…make a lovely Chrismas decoration.  I found them on pinterest, of course, and just had to try them out!!  Here’s the blog called Krokotak where I found them and printed out the patterns from, though the original idea came from here, though it’s not in English.

They are fairly easy to make, if you like cutting up paper!  Cut out a ballerina silhouette from cardstock (or 2 pieces of paper glued together).  Make a snowflake from paper.  Cut a slit in the middle of the snowflake and gently pull it onto the ballerina, to make her “tutu”.  Hang them up and watch them pirouette!!

I know, my sugar plum snowflake ballerina fairies are hanging by large clothespins gripping their heads….it wasn’t meant to be, but I was in a rush, and the clothespins hanging on twine have been there since Henry’s bday ( I had photos hanging from them).  So the season changed and now it’s Christmas ornaments and Sugar plum fairies!

The only different thing I did from the original version was to cut out one silhouette from paper printed with that Christmas Mouse story I did the other day…I thought text on a ballerina would add visual interest…and it does.  (no, they are not tatooed fairies!!)  I love watching them “dance” in every little breeze (from the hot air registers) that comes their way! After Christmas (if I ever get the Christmas stuff taken down and packed away) they will make cute hanging ornaments for the girls’ room until winter’s over….still lots of time left!!!