Gingerbread Boy....or whatever kind of cookie you prefer:)

Ok, so I am back in action and trying to get caught up with things. Another Christmas sort of activity for the boys was in order a few weeks ago so we pulled out the cookie pan that Grandma Kimbrough bought for us and got to baking! About a year ago my mom found the book "Gingerbread Baby" and bought a copy for us and my brother and his wife. Along with this she got really creative and bought us each a cookie/cake pan so that after we read the book with our kids (well mine since my brother and sister-in-law are still young and traveling the world:)) we could make our own gingerbread baby, boy, man...whatever you want to call it.

Since my kids are not big gingerbread cookie lovers, I decided just to make a sugar cookie dough. When the kids got home they helped me press the cookie into the pan and then we popped it in the oven. While it was baking and cooling off they ate their dinner and then were ready to frost the guy and decorate. I had some white canned frosting left in the fridge so we pulled that out and got the frosting done quickly. I had bought the candies (which let me tell you are not the easiest thing to find in Turkey) before picking up the kids and they had a good time decorating. The boys each ate a foot off of our poor guy and Ilkan decided he wanted to take the rest to school the next day to share with his friends. This worked for me since there was no way I needed to help finish off that huge guy!! The kids and teachers at school loved the pan and cookie so it made a nice thing to share!

While at my brother and sister-in-law's house for Christmas we made a chocolate chip cookie man to nibble on for dessert on Christmas Eve and to leave out for Santa. Hope you all enjoyed your Christmas!

Foam and Glitter Ornaments

Holidays mean decorations, baking, and gift giving...well other stuff too but these 3 are on our list right now. Last week we got our tree up. Let me be clear, I got the tree up and the lights on and I waited to put the ornaments on until the boys got home from school. As I mentioned before, decorating the tree and watching Christmas movies go great!

This week we decided to decorate some ornaments of our own to hang up and to distribute as gifts. (Uncle Matt and Aunt Kathi I know I am ruining the surprise but just pretend!!) I headed out to the store to get some foam sheets and glitter glue. Yesterday was a rainy day and I didn't feel like doing much anyways, so while watching movies and drinking coffee while the boys were at school I was tracing and cutting out ornaments. I probably prepared about 20 ornaments to be decorated which proved to be more than enough. I cut out trees, bells, stars, and circles. (Trust me, the trees are fun to decorate but no fun to cut so just do a few of those and get plenty of stars and circles!!)

When the boys came home from school everything was ready and set on the table. They had a great time using the glitter glue pens to decorate the shapes. Ilkan even wanted to get more creative and drew a few pictures of trees to decorate. He declared that one will be for his Aunt and Uncle and the other we have to leave under the tree and write, "Santa take this with you!" (His words, not mine:)) This activity was so fun that we painted until we ran out of glitter glue. Looks like I will be making another trip to the store to get more so we can decorate more ornaments before the holidays!