Gingerbread Houses - The Making

My Mother and Father have quite the construction business going on this time of year!  I decided this year to show a few "behind the scenes" pictures of my Mom putting the cut out gingerbread houses together.  For starters, at this point, my Father long ago cut out wooden circle disks for the houses to rest on and has traced and cut out all of the pieces of foam core board for the walls and roofs of the little houses.  Maybe next year I will catch him in the act for pictures of that process!

Mom decided to use foam core board because she is a genius.  We used to put together graham crackers with thick royal icing as glue which led to much messier houses than we have now.  But if that is all you've got to work with, by all means, get to it!

First Mom wraps each wooden platform with aluminum foil so we can safely use them again and again.  Then she uses a glue gun to put the houses together.  First the walls, then the roof and finally she glues each one down on the aluminum foil.  Her next step will be to cover up the glued edges with icing on each house!  Wow!  That Mother of mine!  This year she made sixteen houses for us!  It seems each year we have more family wanting to join in on the fun and that's A-OK with us!  Nice work Mom!  Love you!

 This is their pattern for two different size houses.  Top secret stuff!

 

 

The disks before foil.

 

Those hands have spanked my bottom and hugged my neck a bunch y'all!

Taped down for security purposes.

 

 

Each house has six pieces... obviously.

 

 

 

So now you see we ain't kiddin around when it comes to this particular tradition.  And my house plans for this year ain't kiddin around either.  Stay Tuned!

 

 

The Dirty Dirty - Part 2

It has literally taken me four weeks to post this.  I have had to come to terms with how awful the before pictures look of this room.  Plus it wasn't completely finished until yesterday when I gave the chair a face lift. 

You are about to see before and after pictures of my "Craft Room".  There is really no excuse for just throwing any and everything into a space  but truthfully I have had a craft room that I treated this way in the last two houses I have lived in.  Which changed their name to "Crap Room".  I honestly had a  mental plan that I would be uprooted from the space one day.   That it would be someone else's room.  Since that isn't going to happen, I decided to give the room meaning.  To sort of embrace the space and call it mine.  Only after three years of treating it like a crap room! 

So here are the before and after pictures of the room. Brace yourself.

A disaster area.  I would make a joke about it when people would come over.  Now I can't believe I showed it to anyone.  The trash bags didn't have actual trash in them.  They were summer sheets and something I drug home. 

I got rid of the wooden file cabinet and the side table housing my old printer.  I threw things away, moved the movie shelf in to the closet and put some things in the attic and other things back where they belong. 

My sister gave me two barn wood shelves (and helped me all day) that her husband made.  I kept the sewing table and chair.  I kept the desk for now although it is empty and ready to go whenever I decide to get a drawing table.  I moved one chair in from the living room.  My sister also helped (a ton) make drapes for the windows.  I plan on finding a rug to go in the middle of the room sometime.

So are you ready to see the result? 

WaaLaa!  I would make a tutorial on the chair redo but I seriously think I broke every upholstery recovering rule that there is.  Then again it would go to show you that everything doesn't have to be perfect when it's yours.  To look at it you would never know.  It can be removed when I am tired of it.  I covered it in a waffle fabric I have had for a long time. 

And there's the Dirty Dirty part two.  I have other areas that are in need of cleaning out.  None that look as bad as this I promise.  I swear I am not a hoarder.  I am busy body with a lazy streak.  That's what we will call it.  I don't put things back where they belong.  So if I can teach myself to do that my life will be a lot simpler!