I really like ginger stuff.  My mom used to make gingerbread and lemon sauce (sounds iffy but it’s great!), I like gingersnaps more than just about any other cookie and I have explored medicinal uses for ginger brandy (uh…sure…medicinal uses).

When Mommaw and Granddad invited us over to make gingerbread houses, I was likely more excited than the kids.  None of us has the patience to make a full-blown 3-D gingerbread house.  Patience runs so thin amongst us, in fact, that Isaac didn’t even have the patience to ice his gingerbread house.  He said he liked it as it was, though I think he really just hates crafty stuff that much.  Anyhow, Mommaw found a simple recipe and a house cookie cutter so we were set to go.

You can see that the kids used the flour with gusto and had it all over.  The very best part of this fun was that it was at Mommaw and Granddad’s house!

We iced most of the cookies a little but we really were excited to get to the eating.  After only 24 hours, we have finished all of the cookies!  Yes, hibernation weight is coming along nicely!

I have mentioned before  that I love Instructables.com.  I was browsing the other evening when I came across a post about cutting intricate paper snowflakes (holy moley, sorry for all the links!)  I don’t think I was ever particularly good at cutting paper snowflakes but I thought I should pass along the frustration of cutting them to my kids.  I had barely finished describing what we needed to do when Isaac declined any further involvement…so, that leaves Abigail to drive to madness!

Typically, when I cut snowflakes, I just started in on the paper in my best Edward Scissorhands imitation.  Like most things, I had no plan or desired output.  It never occurred to me to plan ahead but the instructable changed my mind.  We decided to fold the paper as usual, but then draw a pattern ahead of time.  It made me think about what I wanted the end result to be.  Cool!

Abigail didn’t really get the excitement of “the edge”.  It’s the “mother-edge” I told her, the edge from which all snowflake life flows.  “Ok Dad, can I cut now?”  Ah, sweet…she’s feeling snowflake frustration!  Anyhow, she drew a number of shapes including some trapezoids and parallelograms to see what would happen.  As she unfolded her first snowflake, she began to understand the “edge from which all blessings flow”.

We decided to hang our snowflakes on the front door, but Mohinder, our cat, didn’t like them there…blocked his view I guess.  We had to raise them up so he couldn’t reach them. 

Anyhow, we are pretty proud of our work.  I expect that we’ll make one each night for awhile.  She loves to do arts and crafts projects and this is right up her alley!  I expect that it won’t be long until we learn to make paper-mache or 3-d origami-like ornaments or tissue paper ornaments, etc.

Abigail is also pretty generous and wants to make enough so that we can give them to people for Christmas…I like the way she thinks!

This works…you’ll never believe it, but it works.  We made cinnamon applesauce Christmas ornaments this weekend.  These ornaments are cool and they smell awesome!  We started with 1/2 cup of applesauce and added an equal amount of cinnamon.  At first, it mixed up pretty well and seemed right (whatever that is!) but we quickly found we needed more cinnamon.  We didn’t measure but I’d say we ended up with another 1/2 cup of cinnamon.  Anyhow, mix the two ingredients until they form a fairly dry, thick, clay-like consistency.  Roll them out between sheets of waxed paper until they are 1/4 inch

thick.  Cut out shapes with cookie cutters and start them drying on a clean sheet of waxed paper.  We poked holes in them to run a string through for proper hanging.  Once they have dried about 24 hours, you can flip them and move them to a wire drying rack to finish.  I think ours will be dry tonight (48 hours).  Let me tell you, they smell awesome! 

When I walk in the door at night, the cinnamon fills the air.  I sort of want to lick them but I know better…

Just so you know, they do not taste as good as they smell.  Isaac likes applesauce with cinnamon – a lot.  He reasoned (as I always do) that if a little is good, a lot must be awesome.  He tried some of the dough but quickly downed a bunch of water after eating a small bite (who am I to discourage a little first-hand experience?)  Before Isaac’s bite, Abigail decided she would wait on her brother’s experience before she tried the dough (who am I to push her into reckless behavior?)

As with many crafty things, Isaac was mainly in a hurry to get things done.  He did tough it out because it all smelled so good.  We discovered that appley cinnamon leaves a pretty good stain on your hands but it washes off pretty easily.  We also did a little science related to soil testing – Emily’s Dad is a civil engineer so he was able to rate the consistency of our dough compared to soil.  I think he mainly enjoyed slamming balls of dough onto the waxed paper to see how much it compacted!  It made a great cinnamon thump!

The kids were helping their grandparents decorate their tree last weekend when we all noticed the old ornaments Emily and her brother had made in school.  Several were hand-painted and had pictures of them through the years.  I don’t know if all schools stopped doing that or just the ones we have been in but we don’t have any homemade ornaments and even fewer than none with pictures of the kids.  We couldn’t let that continue so we had project night at our house this weekend. 

Emily’s folks found some wooden ornaments that just happened to have a space in the middle to accommodate wallet sized pictures.  We had just finished having Christmas pictures taken at a local department store and we had the disc with the copies.  I printed out a bunch of copies and we had some good old fashioned fun painting and otherwise decorating the ornaments.

I wear a black leather jacket typically.  I had hung it over the chair in the dining room this weekend (well, truth be told, I hang it there every day).  The kids were dancing around and painting, having fun, etc.  I didn’t notice until the paint was dry, but someone did battle with my coat using a green paintbrush.  Take a moment to find a zen place, Warren…the paint is water based and washable and came right off luckily!

So, all is well. We now have some homemade ornaments with current pictures hot-glued in place.  We had a good time messing around with family and I have a significantly scrubbed, much cleaner coat.  It was certainly good homemade fun!

We hot glued ribbons to the top to hang them on the tree.  It’s sort of funny but we decided that the kids don’t really look like either of us when we were kids.  Of course, my kids are much cuter than we were!