Finished gingerbread house & ornaments

This is the second year we've made Christmas tree ornaments in our family. It has been such fun. We finished stringing and labeling the cinnamon applesauce ornaments for Loralynn's Fische group at German Kindergarten. Several of the parents and the substitute teacher asked about how they were made. It is a little difficult to give recipes to Germans because they weigh their ingredients in grams on little kitchen scales when they

do recipes. I ended up just giving Claudia one of our American measuring cups so that she would have the precise amount of applesauce. Luckily, the cinnamon container already had the weight in grams on the label so that worked out fine.

We turned the white hand prints into tiny snowmen.

For the second ornament project, we bought shatterproof blue ornament balls at Quadro. I painted Loralynn's right hand and Tana's left hand (just in case the balls got mixed up) with white paint and placed an ornament in the center of each of their hands. They closed their painted fingers around the ball and then opened them. Once the paint dried on the balls, I used permanent marker to draw the snowmen and label with their name and year. They turned out so cute!

The cinnamon applesauce ornaments were a hit at school.

For the third year, we also got our gingerbread house made. It was more festive this year because construction happened at a gingerbread house party that Mike and Crystal C. threw. They baked the walls, roofs, and chimneys and did an excellent job putting together a table of decorations and frosting bags. We even got some great chili and cider, too! It was Tana's first chance to add decorations this year. We decided that Loralynn and Tana will be ready to candy-up their own houses next year. It really is so fun and it makes for a lovely table decoration (until little fingers pry off too much of the candy). Amazingly enough, Loralynn was so focus

ed on the decorating that she didn't eat any of the candy that she was putting on. Tana didn't either, and it was nearing the end of the decorating before she realized that the frosting "glue" was pretty tasty!