Decorating For Christmas

     How are your projects coming? Anyone finish their shopping yet? What about wrapping all those gifts? Have you done any baking yet? I know, I know it can be overwhelming. For some reason though, I just can't get in the mood until I do some decorating. That is what seems to put me in the spirit of the season.
     I thought I would show you some of my decorations of what I have done so far. (It is always a work in progress, lol). All of these were without anything Cricut, however, I always keep coming up with ideas so this will probably be updated.
     Today I finished decorating the tree. I love to add ribbon and especially bows. This year I decided to do a spiral wrap with the new ribbon I got at Michael's.Here's our tree:

     I used 2 different sizes of sheer ribbon, the larger ribbon for the 2 bows for the tree top and 30 yards of a small size to "wrap" the tree. I also got a co coordinating solid ribbon with the same beautiful gold flourish to make my bows with.

     We have a rather odd collection of ornaments but collectively they work! I have a set of the nutcracker blown ornaments my mom gave us when my daughters were dancing in the production. The beautiful Christmas tree frame was a place setting that my daughter Amy used one Christmas Day for Dinner. We each had one so it was quite fancy. I don't know where she gets her party ideas from, lol. I still have some of the red ornaments with the snowflakes left from when my kids were small. Sadly some have gone by the wayside.

   I can't believe we still have all 3 of these Santas left! They have a paper mache face and real wool hair and beard.

     I have some tapestry balls that are from the Smithsonian Museum Store. Will you just look at the Santa with sunglasses! We have several clay ornaments from the grand children in Florida. Of course I have some snowbabies ornaments. In case you missed it, I have a post on one part of my snowbaby display HERE. Speaking of the Smithsonian Museum Store, my husband and I have been collecting some carousel animals for several years. He really loved these and I thought they were pretty different. While we usually incorporate them on our main tree, this year I decided to give them a tree of their own:

 

     The following pictures will give you a better idea of these unique ornaments.

     I thought this was a fun ribbon to use with these decorations. This is a really fun part horse, part mermaid. The gold color details are beautiful in person.

      We have a  horse and a camel.

     We even have a zebra, tiger giraffe and an elephant.

     I still have more to do: set up the village, decorate the mantel and oh yah, do some shopping now that I am in the spirit full swing. Let's not forget all those Italian cookies I have to bake!!!

     I'll be back with future posts on my ideas. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Chanukah to all my Jewish friends out there.

Christmas Blogger Bundle

Ben's Birthday Cake

     The month of December is a REALLY busy one for us.You see not only do we have all the activities of Christmas but we have 6 birthdays. Dec.7, 13, 19, 22, 28 and also the 31st! The ages they are celebrating are 5, 5, 23, 38, 2 and 22. I feel so bad for them because it's almost like the birthday is set aside for Christmas. So with that in mind I have always made sure the presents are wrapped for the right occasion and there is a birthday cake. We have plenty of cookies for Christmas but birthdays deserve a cake!
     We don't get to see Nicholas who turned 5 on December 7 since he is in Florida however we did send his gifts. Poor Benjamin who turned 5 on December 13th FINALLY had a party. You see it usually snows or his third birthday was supposed to be a big party however we were hit with a major ice storm and most of us were without power for 3-5 days. Chuck e Cheese to the rescue for some of us, lol. I believe last year there was also a snow storm. So this year the weather co operated and the party was a blast! (Literally, they did laser tag)!
     I had just gotten the Cricut cake machine in (great deal) so this is my first attempt using this machine. I used the Buccaneer cart since it was a pirate party. I think there is going to be a learning curve!

     I had my own gum paste (tinted brown) for the skull and cross bones. The blue and white is a sugar sheet that I thought would be good to work with, wrong! it dries too quickly and is brittle. Even though I got it on sale, I don't think I'll use this again.

     I was fortunate enough to find some pirate themed candles to add to this. How cool are these banners? I made a lot of them because.....

     I made cupcake boxes for the kids party at the laser tag party so each kid would have their own cake. Ben's was extra special with the "Shiver Me Timbers" pattern for the cart. I made a little insert for the bottom of the wrapper to raise the cupcake up. The insert was cut from Sweet Tooth Boxes. I forget which cart I used for the actual box. Just a word of warning if you print your own cardstock with the Imagine, it is not waterproof. I placed the cupcakes in the wrappers just prior to bringing to the party.

     Here's the handsome and ever playful Benjamin who is now officially 5! I will show you the rest of our birthday bashes as the month goes on. Off to practice with my Cricut Cake!!!!

Baking Party

     I promised to show you more about the Baking Party we had for my grand daughters Birthday. On my previous post I showed you the aprons I made for the party favors http://mary-fortheloveofart.blogspot.com/2011/09/party-favors.html now I'll show you why we needed them!

     First of all my daughter Amy made cut out sugar cookies with each child's initial on it. She also purchased some plates with a cupcake on it so she decided to add their name. This way they had a plate to decorate the cookies on and also so they could take their creation home ( That is if they didn't eat it first!).

     The boys were in the kitchen while the girls were in the dining room. They were all too busy either decorating or eating so everyone was well behaved and focused.

     Speaking of focused, it was amazing to see the difference in the 2 groups. They all had the same decorating tubes with frosting, cookies, and sprinkles. Amy put the sprinkles in cupcake liners so the kids could spoon them on the iced cookies. While the boys just squeezed some icing out, threw on some sprinkles and set about eating them, the girls were busy creating, layering and "sharing" their technique!

     Ok, some of the boys really got into it!

     Even the youngest. (Yes they ALL received aprons. Just look at it as an oversized bib!)

Some were extremely proud of their talents and so they should be.

Some were more interested in real food and hanging with the college graduation crowd.

Gotta love this kid!

If you are wondering what the adults were doing here's a peek:

     Remember this is only 3pm BEFORE Tropical Storm Irene hit. She didn't arrive until 11pm. My husband (Fran) and the guys kept sweeping the water away from the tents while everyone was eating in the garage.

After the kids were done decorating, the ladies enjoyed a watermelon Daiquiri