Pinks & Needles: What You'll See at Our House Around the Holidays!

Monday, December 13, 2010

What You'll See at Our House Around the Holidays!

I'm sure all of you are busy busy baking and making!

I still haven't had too much time to do anything gift related quite yet. We've already told the family that we'll be shipping gifts sometime in January. I know this may sound like a bad idea but with hubby's schedule and my carpal tunnel we haven't been able to do what we normally do this time of year! I haven't even baked one cookie yet! Looking back on Christmas' I definitely see a pattern with me. One year I'm "on it" the next year I'm not....over and over like clock work. This year needless to say I'M NOT ON IT this year!

My Etsy shop is as stocked as it's gonna get until the New Year and I have almost all of my existing orders complete so I'm looking forward to later in the week when I can buckle down and get some stuff done!

I'll be making a gingerbread village if my wrist cooperates with me which I'm really looking forward to - all mini houses no big ones this year.

I finally finished my first gumdrop wreath which was so fun to make. A lot of hot glue and 3 cheap $1.00 bags of gumdrops from Wal-Mart and a styrofoam wreath from Michael's! Check it out!

If I had to do it all over again I wouldn't take the time to try and get all of the colors to match up perfectly - a mathematical improbability! But it's always a learning thing for me - I just wing it! and hope it works out okay!

Another shot of it hanging on the wall in my kitchen

Although zero cookies have been baked I did manage to squeeze in some candy making. Another "first try" or shall we say "Operation Buttermint"! I'm renaming them "pain in the booty buttermints" instead. The recipe was from Land O Lakes and was classified as "EASY" - I beg to differ.....I mean I'm not saying I know a lot about making candy but I think I can at least roll a decent rope of two different colors of dough without too much of a problem. Not even close! The dough was so finicky and very hard to work with. I only made a few like this and then gave up:

Then I started to roll them into tiny little balls like this:

Cute but time consuming!

I was happy when I came up with the idea to make them into garlands like this:

I figure they could double as an edible necklace right?

Oh I almost forgot I did bake something but it was only because I had an excuse. I needed to make a little cake bunting and how can you make one of those and not have a cake to stick it in. I totally cheated and made a boxed red velvet cake and popped some cute wooden mushrooms made by Craftsty on it too: