Gingerbread houses, pinecones, hair and Wii

Make a Smilebox slideshow

So this weekend we had some friends come out and make gingerbread houses. Not the premade kits you buy from the store but I made gingerbread, rolled out the dough, measured how big I wanted them all to be, cut and baked it. I bought the candy (navarre is out of gumdrops!), made royal icing (cement) and away we went.

Now the recipe I use is from the Scovile bakery in Nauvoo. It is a soft gingerbread and it tastes amazing. Problem... it is soft and needs time to harden. I didn't have time so that might have been where it went terribly wrong.

Janine and Kayla were excited to come out and make their first gingerbread houses. Janines kids came out as well and were as cute as can be. Kayla is a newlywed and her husband Nolan was supposed to come out but got called out of town for a job he is working on. Either way the adults put the houses together then the kids decorated.

For the record, the houses were all standing at one time. They just were to soft to hold the shape. The kids all had a great time decorating their family house and Kayla was awesome enough to let my kids help her decorate hers too. I will say that Kayla was the most patient and her house was the only one standing at the end of the day.

PineCones...

So we have a million pinecones in our backyard and the kids painted glue on them and shook glitter all over to make them shiny. Janines kids hadn't ever done this before either (I honestly don't know what she does for fun lol) so the kids had a great time with that.

Janines hair...

We went to Kayla's moms salon and she told us how to do Janines hair. We bought the color, developer and went to my house where we colored her hair a gorgeous red! While she was processing, Janine and Kayla played Mariocart Wii. They had a blast and I am so glad they had a great time.

So this past Saturday was a mess, and we had a great time making it. (I know I hate messy, but what do you do?) I am glad I got to share some traditions with my new friends and I hope they had a good time too.

Side note: We made reindeer food for the kids to take home as well. (Of course this was a new thing for Janine and Kayla as well) All I can say is us Mormons have some fun traditions and I honestly don't know what people in FL do for Christmas.