Trying something new- building a Gingerbread House

I designed and cut my own pattern for the house. And I used the better crocker gingerbread cookie mix, which is a delicious cookie, not to spicey- just right for my taste. This was a bigger feat than I thought is was going to be even though I used cookie mix, next year I will plan to start this maybe a week ahead of time as you can see it was not completed before christmas day. With me being new to mixing frosting, I guess I should have bought the frosting instead, you live and you learn. Cooking Christmas dinner took presidence over the gingerbread house so it did not turn out like I imagined, but the family still said they thought it was beautiful.

Still in progress

I have changed that back ground as you can see from what I have previously posted and added layers of color to their faces. Still working on it but I hope to be satified with it by next week, I want to take it to the frame shop to have it professionally framed.

First sewing project- Bears

I let the girls design the facial features and a few extra's that they wanted to do to make it creatively their own. One of the girls chose to use red hearts on the face to make the girl bear cheeks, instead of plain circles like my oldest daughter and I did.

Renny's bear she designed it to have two read hair bows on it's ears.


These bears were made by my oldest daughter and I as examples to nspired the little ones.

Teaching you people to sew can be challenging, due to their inability to concentrate and when I got into doing the project with them I thought that maybe this was a bit to advanced for them at this point but in the end they really did a good job. Using felt, I cut a free hand bear pattern out of construction paper. The stock felt we purchased for 20 cents each from a national craft supply store. My older daughter and I assisted the little ones with cutting the bear pattern from the two pieces of felt. I do believe that they have learned the beginnings of sewing and to me that is just to get the first chance to use a needle and thread. I believe one of them really likes it and the other can take it or leave it. My job as a crafty parent is to continue to introduce new and inspiring things to my girls in order for them to be able to think inside and outside the box. The have to know the basics which is the inside the box part and give them ideas of how those basic can be altered and hopefully they will branch out in their creativity.

udate on the "Strange Lady"

I am building up her skin color, put a little life into her eye's, depth into her hair and will redo the jewelry. Oh, and I added some lashes.

My childrens portrait progress

I'm working on the back ground and the hair etc.

A Couple Things I'm Working On

HAIR- Up Do

She's a natural beauty that normally wares her hair in a wrap style like above and nothing more than Mascara and Lip Gloss, which is fine with me.
With this UP-Do I first used hair glue to put in the "side swipe long bang," in the front. I chose to use hair glue for easy removal ( remove with hair glue remover or practically any kind of oil) on the 10 inch track hair.
The back part of this Up-Do I chose to use the synthetic braid hair.
To add a little pizazz we placed a few blond track pieces for the highlighted efect and spiraling from the back.
This is MAC makeup without the false eyelashes.

I have the creative bug again.

This painting was done in 2005 and I am just now feeling inspired to do anything again just for me. I feel excited and greatful because there is nothing like feeling like you can create anything, a poem, a painting, a scrapbooking page or sewing a dress, I believe we all need a little bit of that in our lives. So I say, "create something anything- just do it, don't worry what someone else thinks, just do it".