Wordless Wednesday: Quick Christmas Pics Before Church

Gingerbread (well technically Graham Cracker) Village

Last night was our annual gingerbread house making  night. We have done this for the past few years, and I honestly think it is one of the boys' favorite Christmas activities. Maybe because they get to play with candy...or maybe because they get to sneak candy while they are decorating:)

Jason constructs the little houses out of graham crackers and confectioner sugar icing, and then we basically have a free for all with our candy bowl and a few candies bought just for our gingerbread houses.

My {semi-ocd} house with lots of red and green. I saw the cute double stack bushes on another website, and bought those little gumdrops just so I could have cute bushes outside my gingerbread house:) There is also a cobblestone walkway made out of a variety of brown jelly beans.

Jason's perfect house has a Bubbletape roof and cute Christmas lights along the roof line. He also added windows out of yellow gummies and Swedish fish bushes all the way around his house.

Henry got creative with the decorations in his "yard" and made some cute lollipop and lifesaver lamp posts. He also added a really cute chimney that didn't make it through the night:) You can see it on the plate on the left hand side...we can try to reattach it later.

Grant had a free for all with every kind of candy we had. He added lifesavers to his roof along with a tootsie roll. He made a Swedish fish door and a {not very sturdy} Swedish fish fireplace on the back of his house. He also made bushes similar to mine, with what he called 'snow' made out of gum on top of them:)

Eli's house was completely made by Eli...and by that I mean he even used some of his spit to get things to stick! He would find a piece of candy, suck on it for a few minutes, and then decide to stick it to the roof of his house. He also got caught a few times sneaking things off the roof of his house to eat:)

Thanks for visiting our Gingerbread Village...I hope our little houses have inspired you to make your own village this year:)

Because Everything is Better with Glitter

Back in September, the boys and I gathered up some really cute little pine cones while we were out of town for our family reunion....yes I have been saving pine cones since September to do this project:) I actually put the pine cones in my glass jar during the fall, but I knew they needed to be fancied up a little bit for Christmas. So here are my Glittered Pine Cones, and a step by step just in case you have been saving pine cones for months too:)

 Start with your pine cones, spray adhesive, glitter in any color you would like, and brown paper lunch bags.

Lay your pine cones out on a protected surface.

 Open up your lunch bags and dump a pretty good amount of glitter into them. One color per bag...or you could be wild and mix them all together:)

 With your pine cones on a protected surface {aka newspaper} spray them with a liberal coat of spray adhesive.

 Drop your pine cone into the lunch bag, seal the top, and shake it around.

 Carefully remove your pine cone making sure to knock off any of the excess glitter...and you have SUPER cute Glittered Pine Cones!

 I did mine in red, green, and white but I think these would be really great in all white or maybe a few different shades of blue.The great thing about this project is that it is easy to modify to fit your decor!

 I think they look great in my glass container...much fancier than the plain ones before {because everything is better with glitter!}

 And just because I was in a glittery kind of mood, I also did made some cute glittered trees {as seen on eighteen25}. I sprayed the cones with adhesive, dropped them into the paper bag, gave them a shake, and then hot glued them to some glass candle holders from the dollar store.

cute, quick, and cheap...my favorite kind of craft!

Have you glittered anything today:)