All Aboard the Gingerbread Train

I’m not crafty.  People know this.  I walk into Michael’s and I feel like a failure.  Raw wood, pieces of glass, clasps and beads, pom poms, dried flowers, walls of ribbon.  I am usually running into this store for cute cupcake holders or stickers for Preston. That’s about the extent of Michael’s and I.  Speaking of ribbon, my father asked me to pick up ribbon for wreaths to hang outside their house at Michael’s recently.  Both Mel and I went to procure the ribbon.  We failed.  We didn’t buy enough ribbon or strong enough ribbon. And we really took our time too.  We pondered over the THREE aisles dedicated to RIBBON (which is just plain ludicrous) and had to decide between velvet ribbon, piped ribbon, embossed ribbon, red ribbon, maroon ribbon, off red ribbon.  We may have sweat.

I admire people who can take paint, glue, glitter and a few pieces of fabric and create things that I see on the internet sold for $50 dollars and buy.  Like Preston’s paper Mache antique baseball tissue box cover for his new bathroom.  I’m lucky I can color…barely. 

Yet every year for the past three we buy the gingerbread kits.  One year it was a train, last year a house and this year a train again.  Last year I made my brother Chris build the house.  His patience level is even less than mine.  So when he had it all ready and then put the roof on and the sides collapsed there was not a lot of Christmas cheer piping out of the kitchen.  This year I opened the kit only to find a bag of powder.  Looking quick it looked like a bag of cocaine you’d see on a drug raid on Cops.  Apparently that was the powder to MAKE the icing.  And you had to work quick because the icing hardens fast.  This year I feel we have done much better.  I was even impressed I used the icing bag to make a window, write our names and paint a BOW on a peppermint.  Ha!  Try painting a bow on a peppermint!  Preston is very proud and told me that we did a great job!  He spent more time eating icing instead of spreading icing however!

Preston also tackled his first 100 piece puzzle he got from Aunt Melski.  I barely helped him at all!  Notice the little train next to him-the Santa express from Grandma! 

Hope everyone is enjoying their last few days before Christmas!