Some creative ups and downs

 You know how I make our family Christmas card every year? I’ve had 4 nearly production-ready prototypes totally FAIL on me this year!!!! It is really just taking up more time than I want it to.  No one would really notice/care if we didn't send one out this year would they?  Never fear;I’ll keep on trying.

I helped J’s class make their class banner for the Christmas program. They sang the 'Reindeer Twist' for one of their numbers, so I drew a huge reindeer head wearing sunglasses and helped the kids make ornaments out of old CDs. Then I twisted up tan tissue paper and glued them to the banner in the shape of antlers and we hung the CD ornaments from the antlers. It was really fun. From the student, teacher and parent reactions I got, you’d think I’d created a Renaissance masterpiece. After the Christmas card failures, that helped to puff up my rather deflated ego.

And here are some pictures of our little performers.

While it's been really rainy in California this week, the weather here has been nearly San Diegan! We set up the card table on the new front deck and made gingerbread (aka graham cracker) houses in the afternoon. S and I went for sort of classic themed houses.

and a bit of silliness with frosting.

 J’s made a fishing house with a candy cane fishing pole that is tempting a green gumdrop crocodile. 

and asked the universal question...

AJ & M were working together because AJ was pushing the structural limits of icing and graham crackers. Ultimately his house did collapse, but he took it in stride and declared that it was a deserted house. He learned the word “deserted” just that morning and I rather think he was making a play on words with “dessert”; that clever little guy.

AJ was the only boy invited to a little classmate’s birthday party, but he didn’t seem to mind. He wanted to give her something with a Frozen theme. I made her one of my no-sew t-shirt capes in teal with dollar store plastic snowflake ornaments & gems glued onto it! It was spectacular if I do say so myself.  We added more snowflakes to a dollar store crown too.  Here he is reluctantly letting me check it for size.  He'll probably hate me some day for posting this one. ;)