Christmas Goodies

We had a joyous and exhausting Christmas day. The kids' choir sang at the Christmas Eve service at church and eventually got to bed more than an hour late - and then couldn't fall asleep (meaning Santa couldn't come before Santa fell asleep!) We did actually take some gifts downstairs before we went to bed, but I just reasoned I'd set my alarm really early and beat them downstairs to stuff the stockings...I fell asleep, but woke up at 1:30 and hastily stuffed them. Good thing, because the kids were up more than an hour early.

So this year, I didn't do quite as much baking as I have in the past.  During November, I made 8 batches of peppermint pinwheels to gift as neighbor/teacher gifts.  I double wrapped them and froze them.  It made it easy to slice and bake them and they tasted excellent.

I did not plan to make a gingerbread house, but Caleb wanted to make one very much, so I told him I would help him if he did most of the work.

We had some support issues - that is we had patience issues.

We did finally get the icing to dry and the house to stand, but then we had patience issues dealing with the candy and then with bits of the roof.

Note the Nativity Set backwards and askew.  With the house out of sorts from construction, there is no good place for our decorations and they just move from place to place.

And when it got to this point (the next day) I took this picture and took the house apart.

On Christmas morning, I made cinnamon rolls, which were delicious.  These are not the ones I made, however I did make these and they are not edible!

I am so pleased with how these turned out!  They look absolutely real.  The girls and I found a deeply discounted doll table a few weeks ago and for Christmas morning I wanted to set it for their American Girl dolls.  I found polymer clay cinnamon rolls on Etsy costing $10 for 2 and thought, surely I can do this.  Six YouTube tutorials later...I did!