Homemade gingerbread house (vegan)

We had a spent a wonderful morning making gingerbread houses with out friends. Well to be honest we made the actual houses the day before and decorated them the next day. My friend's children are allergic to milk and eggs so we used a vegan recipe for both the gingerbread and the icing. I think they turned out great! Here is her website that links to the recipes that we used.

http://doodlebugdeb.blogspot.com/2010/12/gingerbread-house.html

Bird feeder cutouts

For advent this year we rotate between activities, crafts, and little presents. Here is one crafts I came up with that actually turned out really cute.

First I cute Christmas shapes out of cardboard. Then we tied strings on to the tops of them.

Next we smeared peanut butter and birdseeds over both sides of the shapes.
Here they are in their finished state. Some of the shapes worked better then others.
Then we hung them outdoors. The birds loved them. We had a titmouse, downy woodpecker, and blackcapped chickadee visit.

Hanukkah Celebration

Last year we bought K a little Hanukkah set for the 1st day of Hanukkah. We aren't Jewish we enjoy exposing K to lots of different religions and holidays. Each year we celebrate by reading stories about Hanukkah, eating Latkes, and putting out K's Menorah.

Advent Calendar Finished (Kinda)

The advent calendar is finished (kinda). Next year I plan to add animals, but it is now in working order. I'm really excited to start december first.

K's little foot popped in there.

I know, I'm no artist, but these are the little slips I'm putting in the calendar to represent what we'll be doing that day.

I ended up using a small curtain rod to hang it by. Here is a close up of the pockets. They are each needle felted on wool felt.

Snowy Windowstar

So it hasn't really started snowing here yet, but K has been begging to make a snowflake window star. While I worked on it, K made these great little pink stars using tiny scissors and glue.

Baby Booties

Today is one of my good friend's due dates. She is expecting another little girl. I'm excited that both our children will be really close in age. She lives pretty far away from us, but we still are able to see them a couple of times a year.

I found this great bootie pattern at the store (I think its Macalls). I made up the embroidery, however. I'm excited to get the birth announcement and send along the booties. :)

Thanksgiving Candles

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! We had a nice Thanksgiving at my mother's house with my family and also my Mother-in-law's family. It was nice to have everyone together this year. Because food has still been grossing me out, K and I made candles to contribute to dinner. I found the idea in LivingCraft magazine.

First we carved out the middle of two orange halves and a pomegranate. Then we used scissors to make jagged edges. Finally we filled them with melted beeswax.


They looked great on the Thanksgiving table.

Beeswax leaves

K and I collected fall leaves again this year to dip in beeswax. K was able to help a little bit more this year and was in charge of laying out the dipped leaves (1st picture). The last picture is the leaves on the nature table. They turned out great.

Making cookies

Our dyed cookie doughK rolling out the dough with his tiny rolling pin
The cookies before they entered the oven
Unfortunately the colors didn't really hold

I was finally about to find some natural food coloring through a co-op. We decided to make Halloween cookies (I know I'm behind here). We had a great time dying the dough and making the cookies. Unfortunately, the natural dyes baked out as they cooked. Although when you took a bite the inside was still colorful. :)

Carrots!

This is the first year I've ever planted carrots and they turned out beautiful!

I wasn't sure they'd turn out at all as I had a few people tell me they had terrible luck with carrots. Anyway I loved their colors so much I wanted to share.

We ended up cooking them in lentils for dinner.

Witch Puppet

This is actually a felt puppet that I made a couple of years ago (while I was pregnant), but I don't think I've ever had the chance to post it before. She stays with our halloween decorations so she is usually packed away. Anyway I got the pattern from a library book on stuffed animal making and for the life of me can't remember the name.

Tub Paint

We made this great tub paint the other night. Its just a mix of cornstarch, food coloring, and liquid soap. I just mixed until it had a good consistency. K had a great time painting the tub and himself. It was a bit of a mess to make (cornstarch always is) but it was lots of fun.

Fall Nature Table.

Just a small peak at our fall nature table.

Updates

Here's an updated picture of my advent calander. I finally was able to get the felt I wanted to make the pockets. I'm about half way done needle felting the numbers on (not shown). I should be right on track to get this done on time. I hope.

Anyway so I'm sure you have all noticed that I've been pretty absent lately. Well that is because we are expecting another baby! yay! So why would that explain my absence? Well I've had pretty horrible nausea that only gets worse by looking at the computer. I'm 15 weeks now and it has not let up a bit, so I mostly only get on the computer for a quick e-mail update. So my updates will probably be spotty and in big clumps until I can get back on my game. This also means that when I am here to update everything will be quite behind. Anyway I have a few more posts for this clump and then hopefully won't be gone for too long. :)

Lantern Walk

Not the best pictures but we joined some friends again this year in the Martinmas Lantern Walk. It was pretty cold this year and snowing. We walked through a park, sang some songs about light and then heard a story about the sun. The Host then passed out tulip bulbs to be planted. The whole thing ended in a potluck. It was really sweet. Unfortunately one of our lanterns broke. I guess we're going to have to get out the glue, jars, and tissue paper to make a new one. :)

Halloween Post

Its been quite awhile since I've been on here. More on that later. Here are some Halloween pictures from the past month. K decorated his pumpkin with a pumpkin kit. For mine I carved a pirate ship.

While Our pumpkins were waiting to be carved on naughty little squirrel bite a while into one of them for a small feast. We decided to feed him and his siblings by filling it back up with our pumpkin scraps. They seemed to enjoy that.

Wet felting the advent calendar

Laying the lightly needle felted scene on bubble wrap. I then poured warm water and soap on top of it. Next I rolled it up and then rolled it back and forth for about 10 minutes.
Here it is felted, but still soapy.
Rinsed off and starting to dry.
Why these are not flipping beats me. Anyway here is part two of my advent calendar. I have finally felted it so I don't have to worry about K getting ahold of it and pulling it apart. Today I ordered the rest of the felt that I'll need to make the calendar part. I'm going to make 25 little pockets below it and needle felt the numbers on. Might be awhile for my next update as I need to wait for the materials to arrive in the mail.

Little felt mouse

I made this little mouse out of wool felt hoping to tell K the story of the lion and the mouse. It wasn't until I was done though, that I realized we don't actually have a lion. I really thought I had a lion puppet. So for now he is sitting on the nature table till I figure out what to do about a lion. Perhaps I can borrow one from a friend.

Learning to sew

K has been asking to sew for quite awhile now. My mom found this little sewing machine at a garage sale and K loves it! It took us awhile to figure out how to get the thing going (its not the worlds best sewing machine), but now he's asking to sew all the time. I love the way he examines his stitches after sewing. Its really sweet.