Last Friday, the first Friday of December, the Friday after Thanksgiving weekend, the Friday before the big PTA Holiday House that I help organize, I was feeling very Grinch-like. No holiday spirit whatsoever. I forced myself to go find my Santa baseball hat and work on my best Cindy Lou Who attitude and go decorate the school.
This is what I got:
Holiday House is a big festival complete with Breakfast with the Holiday Characters, Santa Photos, Silent Auction, Elf Shop, Mistletoe Market - that's my event, and free International Holiday Games. It went off beautifully even though I set my alarm for PM instead of AM and woke up 5 minutes before I was supposed to be there (good thing I only live 3 blocks away and had packed my stuff the night before - one of the vendors was there before me though). My introvert husband volunteered to help make the breakfast. My 13 year old daughter spent most of the day volunteering by either babysitting the children of adult volunteers or working at one of the game stations. My 10 year old ran around the school with the 7 year old and they had a blast!
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| all of the halls were decorated with this much glitter and pizzazz |
Well, come Sunday, the Holiday House was over and cleaned up, I slept all night long and after a leisurely breakfast, we cleaned the house that's been ignored for 3 weeks while I worked on orders and Holiday House and PTA treasurer stuff and stressed about selling our townhouse which finally closed just before Thanksgiving (original closing date was Nov 4). I finally felt up to even addressing the tree.
Now, our tree is tiny. It's 18 inches wide. We bought it b/c we lived in a 12 ft wide townhouse with 3 kids; anything bigger just takes up too much space. I love our tree and I don't want to clean up anything bigger! My husband set up the tree and we decorated it together.
Now, back to Pinterest. Today, I'm in an even more holiday mood! I decided to tackle a pinterest project that I had bookmarked months ago - Peppermint Ornaments. I don't really like peppermint (love the smell, eh the flavor) so I can take or leave candy canes but there's always a few that don't get eaten when I take the tree down and I end up using them to make peppermint ice cream in the summer. I wanted something fun and I came across this pinterest photo when I was looking for ideas for our summer art camp and bookmarked it.
It looks easy, I said! Cookie Cutters, Peppermint Candy, cooking spray (??), a toothpick! No problem! I even bought some more non-painted metal cookie cutters this fall. Okay, so it took a while to find the peppermint candies. I like a particular brand and no one carries them anymore. Oh well!
So I follow the directions:
pre-heat oven to 350 - check
spray metal cookie cutters with cooking spray for easy release - check
fill metal cookie cutters with peppermint candies - check
put into oven until candies melt - huh, no time listed...
I picked 5 minutes arbitrarily since cookies bake in about 7 minutes.
The first batch turned out ok but there were a few mishaps - a missing mitten thumb, an armless snow man, a curvy light bulb.
No problem - I'll just add a couple extra candies to those ornaments for the next batch. But the layered one weren't melted so I put them back in WITHOUT SETTING A NEW TIMER! oops! When I pulled the tray out, the sugar was boiling... well, the back looks kind of fun!
I watched the next 2 sets and they turned out great! The hardest part is putting the hole in them. Even with cooking spray, the toothpick stuck to the candy a lot.
I put them on the tree - they are WAY cuter than the candy cane crook!
What's this year's holiday best seller at Hamburke's? Coffee Cup Cozies - specifically, this guy!
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