Ok, so I thought it would be fun to make a gingerbread house with Emma this year. Keep in mind that she is not quite 3 and not much help. I think in the future I will be waiting until she can be of more assistance. My hand hurt so bad by the end. I think I made my icing too hard, which was good for sticking things, but horrible for my hands. It was the first one I'd ever done, so I am hoping for better results in the future.

However, Emma loved it and keeps showing everyone that comes over 'her house'.

Getting started:


The goodies:





Finished product:








Finished product with Emma (you can tell by her face what she was helping with) =)


All in all it was an exhausting 2 1/2 hours, but well spent. It's a cute little house and I had a great time with my little muncher.

This year we had our 2nd annual Cookie Day. A friend and I get together and bake for hours upon hours and make containers of cookies to give away to people at our church. This year we baked for approximately 15 hours total. Lots of yummy cookies were made as well as some fond memories. My friend's sister calls us the Julie Rae Show. I look forward to many more years of Cookie Days.

Here are some picture highlights from our day:







My little helper rolling the Snickerdoodles:

(this might be half of what we did that day)

I can't believe the holidays have been here and gone already. I'm just now finding the time to sit down and share some of our Christmas traditions and decorations with you, so bear with me.

First, here is a little tour of my Christmas decorations:

Starting with the star of the season ~ our tree: (not the best picture of it, but I love it anyway)



The next best part ~ the mantle:



Some of my snowmen friends for you all to meet:





(I love this one, but it came out a little blurry, so I changed it to b&w)



This is one of my new guys this year:


Our new family ornament this year:



Emma's new ornament this year (I painted it for her):



I hope you enjoyed the little tour of my Christmas decorations. On to posts about cookies and gingerbread houses and such. See you soon!

GIVEAWAY!!!

This one is a wonderful Thanksgiving giveaway. Here's a picture of what you could win.




Go visit Melissa's Heart & Home.

If you love Autumn/Fall Decorations check out a fun Linky party at Creations by Kara. There is also a giveaway if you enter by Friday. Here is a picture of what you can win - how cute!!



Check out my Autumn Decorations post if you haven't had a chance to yet. I will be finishing another pumpkin post in just a little bit. Please come back to see the cute pumpkins I made.

Happy Autumn!

After reading this post at Shanty2Chic I decided I really wanted to make these pumpkins myself. So, I got the supplies I lacked and got started. Mine are a little different, cause the only pumpkins I could find at Wal-mart had a beaded texture, so I had to improvise.

If the pumpkins have a beaded texture, you can't just spray paint them, it runs right off. So, I was bummed and trying to think of a different way. I walked past the table that still had my daughters paints on it and a light bulb went on - I thought I would try brushing on some Acrylic paint instead. Worked like a charm. Makes it hard to distress, though, cause you can't just wipe paint off the textured surface. It didn't really need it as long as some of the orange was still peeking through - so I skipped that step.


Oops!!! I forgot to take a picture of me doing the twine step. (My back went out Saturday night so I finished these on Sunday in my lap - a very tricky thing to do with a hot glue gun, but i survived.)


So, here are the pictures of my finished product. I love my new pumpkins! I think I may be developing an obsession with twine. What a great way to embelish!






I hope you will also be inspired to make some new pumpkin decorations, too. I had a lot of fun and love looking at them!

My sweetpea is 2 1/2 this year and so I thought we would start doing some more crafty things. I thought we could start at this time of year with painting pumpkins. I LOVE pumpkins!! We had such a good time! Below are some pictures of my beautiful daughter's beautiful creation.


First we went to Michael's to get the paint and brushes since I had none in the house.




Then we went to Wal-mart for the pumpkins.



Then we went home, ate dinner, and got started. Note: this is the first time I have gotten her to smile for the camera for a LONG time.

She was taking it soo seriously. It was so cute!!


This is her 'smiley face':


Our finished products and my cute little one:


We had a blast!!