Some Last Minute Fun--It's not too late!

Merry Christmas!  Are you having fun yet? :)

If not, here's an idea that I think is appropriate until New Year's at least.

We made gingerbread houses a few nights ago.  In the past, we've done gingerbread houses the hard way (homemade royal icing and homemade gingerbread pieces) and the easy way (canned frosting and graham crackers).  This year, we tried a hybrid approach that worked really well--homemade icing and graham crackers.

The icing only takes about five minutes to make, but it allows the pieces to stick together sooooo much better than canned or buttercream frosting.

A recipe for it is here or here.

I've found the best way to use the icing is to fill individual sandwich-size ziploc baggies and snip the corner off.  Voila!  Your own icing bag.


I love the feeling of having our whole family in absorbed silence, doing something at the same time.




Usually that only happens when we are eating an especially good meal :).

I bought a few $1 bags of candies, some M&M's and we used up the last of our Halloween candy to decorate these beauties.

So, they turned out something like this.

Kidding, kidding.  This is a picture of a group of gingerbread houses one of my best friend's mom did for the Salt Lake Festival of Trees about five years ago.  She is a gingerbread artist (pronounced (ar-TEEST, in case you're wondering).  So amazing and precise.

This is how ours really turned out.


My house.  I loved my dutch door and rail fence :).


Damon--a demented but proud decorator.


Sawyer, who was so excited he was in constant motion (even as I tried to snap his picture).


Lukas, who made me take about 7 pictures of his house, to capture the different angles.


Sophie, whose house was probably the most detailed, and who totally hogged the red and green M&M's :).

Brendan's was probably the most architecturally correct, complete with chimney, etc.

Maybe next year I'll make real gingerbread again*.  But I have to say that spending only 10 minutes (rather than 2 hours) for my family to have an hour and 1/2 of fun together is a pretty good trade-off.  

What about you?  Have you made gingerbread houses this year?

*Or, I might buy the ones at IKEA--I saw them there the day after we made ours.  $3.99 for a whole house of gingerbread pieces (not including candy and icing, which I like to buy myself anyway).

Family Time Warp

I was quickly browsing through my local Value Village this morning, ostensibly for "Kip"-style glasses (a'la Napoleon Dynamite) for Damon's Halloween costume, when "Let's Do the Time Warp Again" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show came over the loudspeaker.

I actually find that song incredibly annoying, but I have felt like I was in a bit of a time warp the last few days.  I finally decided to load all the pictures from our old CPU onto our new computer.

Yeah, we upgraded two years ago--wanna make somethin' of it??

Anyway, I found lots of adorable pictures of my kids which no one else will likely find as fun as I do, but I also found some before pictures of our kitchen in Utah.  We replaced the counters, appliances, put in a granite tile back splash, had the finish on the kitchen cabinets renewed and installed pulls.  We budgeted carefully and found great deals.  All told, we spent around $5,000 and dramatically changed the look and feel of the space.

View #1 Before



View #1 After


View #2 Before

View #2 After


View#3 Before


View #3 After

View #4 Before


View #4 After

Ahh--I love it when a plan comes together {{pat my own back}}.

It's gratifying to see what a difference we made in the life of that kitchen, and to know that I can make some happy changes to our home now, a little at a time.

Speaking of which, we are receiving a new fridge today after some unnecessary drama getting it in our kitchen doorway.  Let me just say that the old adage to measure twice is good advice.  With new appliances, the kitchen looks--and functions--so much better.  The rest of the things I want to do in there are mercifully much, much cheaper.

Does anybody else besides me like to relive the glory days of successful projects long after they are complete?  Feel free to brag to me...

Homecoming at Home

I have been completely missing in action the last week or so, because I agreed to do a very daring thing.  I guess Brendan isn't the only brave one in our family, after all.

He was going to his first Homecoming dance on Saturday, after asking in a dramatic way a few weeks ago.  My husband and I encouraged him to have a few of his friends and their dates come to our house for dinner instead of going to a restaurant.  We figured that the food would be better, it would be cheaper, and it would be fun for our family to work together to prepare and present this kind of evening.  We told him that 8-10 people would be a perfect number.

When a bunch of his friends got word of the event, they wanted in.  As in, at the final tally, we served 35 teenagers dinner.  Yikes!

  
 

We accommodated everyone by pushing all our furniture in our family room to the sides and bringing in tables and chairs conveniently stolen borrowed from our church (we did give them back, I promise).  Two other moms who are a-maz-ing cooks (amazing to the point that I have to really try to not feel completely jealous/insecure around them in the kitchen) did the majority of the cooking.  I made a bunch of decorations earlier in the week, and then I (with help from my mom and another nice mom who volunteered at the last minute) decorated and hosted.  My husband hauled tables and chairs like a maniac, vacuumed and held down the fort with the younger kids and their soccer games that afternoon while I worked feverishly all day to prepare.  The younger kids all pitched in, too, working like house elves.  Literally, see?



Hey, even House Elves need a break.  S.P.E.W., unite :) !

House elves, because their Homecoming had a Harry Potter theme.

Is that not the coolest Homecoming Week theme ever!!?!  

Anyway, in homage of Harry Potter, we served the guests butterbeer as they were arriving and taking pictures.  It was pretty good, by the way.  Fairly close to the stuff we drank at Harry Potter World last February.

About a half-hour before we were due to start, I was worriedly mulling over what a fool I am for taking on projects like this when I seem to have enough to do just keeping clean underwear in people's drawers.

But half-way through the evening, I got one of those happy, "this was worth the sacrifice" kind of satisfying feelings.  Having 35 teenagers in our home was a delight, our carpet remained unscathed despite serving sparkling grape juice (don't quite know why I approved that idea :) ) and I think it'll be something they will all remember for a long, long time.




Anybody else bitten off more than you can chew lately, but loved every minute of it like I did :)?  

A New Love and Getting Down to Bid-ness...

I bit the bullet and decided to buy a new-to-me DSLR camera last week off Craigslist.



A Nikon D70s, to be exact.

Oh yeah!

I have already given my offspring many stern lectures about laying a finger or any other appendage on my camera.  I have plans to buy a lame point-and-shoot for them.  Maybe one with shock absorbers :)?

Now that I'm back in business camera-wise, it's time for me to get down to bid-ness. Here are some sad pictures of the state of things in some parts of our house.

The laundry room.

Sophie's closet.

My closet--eek.

I know, I know.  The horror!

We had our popcorn ceilings removed while we were away on vacation in August.  That is the good news.

The bad news is that we stashed everything from our rooms into our un-popcorned closets on top of stuff that we hadn't unpacked/organized from the move.  The icing on the cake is that all of this is now covered with drywall dust.  Drywall dust is of the devil!  It seeps into every crack and crevice.

Anyway, now that the kids are back in school, I'm excited to do some organization and cleaning to make our home function better.  You know you are officially a nerdy mom when cleaning and organization make you feel a sense of giddy anticipation :).

Look at some of these fun pics I snapped with my new love this morning. A good camera is so fun! 

Seattle Aquarium

I think that some of you out there may be worried that our house has turned into some sort of Dickensonian sweatshop due to my desire to make the summer a productive one.  Never fear, gentle readers.  We are having fun, too.

To prove it, we went to the Seattle Aquarium several weeks ago to have a last fling with our Aquarium membership (thank you friends, for buying it for us!) before it expires.  The Aquarium is located right at the pier on Elliot Bay in Seattle, and it was a beautiful, sunny day.  Perfect field trip weather!

 There was a real diver in the main tank as we came in.  She gave Sawyer a high-5 through the glass.  He was thrilled :).

 One of the poor manhandled starfish in the touch pool.  I really think those starfish and other creatures have a rotten life.  I saw more than one kid (okay, okay--mine included) who weren't using the much-recommended "two finger touch" approach.  Ouch.

 
 Sharks are way too big, aren't they?  I saw Jaws at an impressionable age, and I can freak myself out about sharks when I'm just swimming in a pool.  {{S h i v e r }} 

 It looks like they are headed into the darkness 20,000 leagues under the sea thanks to my killer camera skills, but all the kids had fun hamming it up with the head-pokey-through-the-scenery-thingies (yes, it's the technical term).

 Sophie looking like a glamorous scuba diver.

 Lukas going all Mr. Roboto with his scuba gear on.

 They had really cool glass art in one section of the aquarium that was supposedly done by 3rd graders.  I'm not sure how that is possible, but it was really fun to look at.

 A seriously huge starfish with legs to spare.

 Why can't everyone look normal at the same time when I try to take a picture?  Honestly :)...

Soaking up the sun and watching the ferries go by.  What a life.


P.S.  I almost forgot: After we went to the aquarium, we got ice cream cones at the pier. Can I just say that coconut ice cream is my new favorite?  Mmmmmmm....so good.  That is all, peeps.