DD2: Decorating Gingerbread Houses

Simple as that day two slips in to the back of Day 1.  Day 2 began with decorating Gingerbread Houses with Grandma B. 

Two years ago, my mom and son decorated a gingerbread train using a kit from Target and he hasn't stopped talking about it since.  We found these Wilton kits at Michael's this week and they were a big hit.  They come with lots of frosting, candy, the house panels, and fondant!  I bought the "add-on" candy pack too because it had cute star and light bulb shaped candies.  B made patterns all over and M's was a bit more free form.  Grandma led the way and I jumped in to help when E was otherwise occupied.  When they were complete and M had wandered off to play with various LEGO blocks in her room, B and Grandma made a gingerbread boy out of paper for his house and then added lots of LEGO minifigs.  M discovered this and added the LEGO Duplo animals she had been playing with so then our houses were both beautiful and had residents!  It was a very fun morning. (Umm, yes, we really do like everything LEGO). 

Crafting note - It was hard to pick just one picture as there are a lot of great ones, but this image best summed up the story.  Also, there were more stories from this day, as is often the case.  They will either be bonus stories in the other section or filled in on other days that are lest bursting with fun.

I am also occasionally doing Journal Your Christmas prompts if I have time or the topic inspires me.  Yesterdays was about the count down to Christmas.  I think for many the first thing is putting up the Christmas tree, but that definitely didn't happen early in my growing up memories.  This journaling card is filled with that story of selecting cedar trees from our farm, closer to Christmas and other reflections on getting our tree when I was a kid.  I looked through my files and didn't find any pictures with a cedar tree so for now this is just a card by itself in the bonus section.  Perhaps my mom can copy a picture for me or maybe it will just be journaling, which I'm fine with as it is another story told. 

As with Day 1 - the DD and JYC projects didn't take very long in my new system so, I made a layout about another family tradition using pictures from 2010, I think.  This is the treasure hunt that ensues when we brave the attic to look for Christmas decorations.  We went on this very hunt yesterday so I suspect DD3 may be about setting up the Christmas tree!