Gingerbread Kitchen

I have finished one of the gingerbread garlands for the kitchen windows so have taken some photos of my gingerbread kitchen. I have the 'men' finished for all 3 garlands so should be able to get them done by Christmas.


Here are closeups of portions of the garland. The only part I had to purchase were the buttons. I had the felt from some washable felt vests that I made several years ago and the ribbon is some I have had for years. I think a red ribbon would look nice so only pinned the gingerbread men to the gold ribbon for now. I may change it next year.




This is the tree I have decorated with gingerbread type ornaments. Above the pantry is an open ledge that is pretty well useless except to store large items (if you don't mind them sitting in view of everyone). There are no power outlets near there - so no lights on this tree (I guess I could buy a strand of battery lights but I like it the way it is for now.
The larger gingerbread men are wooden candle holders. The white and brown striped one is a gingerbread man shaped jar filled with the ingredients for ginger cookies. I got it several years ago from a friend and have never baked them. I don't have the recipe that was attached so will probably never make them. Some day I plan to put a string of lights in the jar or just crumpled brown paper.





This is a closer view of the tree. The wooden
gingerbread candle holders are a set that
I painted over 20 years ago (pre-marriage) .
The ornaments have been collected over the
years. Some are from my collection of dated
Hallmark ornaments , some are from our
family ornaments and some are just ones
I had. I did not set out to collect them but
had quite a few when I decided to do the
gingerbread tree the first year we were in
this house.

Birthday cakes and gingerbread men

This is a week for birthday cakes. DH's birthday was near Thanksgiving so he opted to wait for his red velvet cake. The next weekend we attended a Christmas Open House with all sorts of treats so that wasn't a good time to have cake either. So yesterday I baked the cake and now I am in the process of frosting it. It is not a red velvet cake without the frosting - flour and milk are heated until thickened and cooled - cream margarine (or shortening) and sugar, gradually add the cooled milk mixture and some vanilla. It is really good frosting -- I had to do some grocery shopping after church to be prepared for the winter storm coming our way so got a late start on the frosting. I have the milk mixture cooling now but need to leave in about 15 minutes for Care Group so I'll have to finish it up when I get back home.

Then Tuesday is DD#1's 19th birthday. She will not be home from college until Wednesday but I will be making her a cherry chip cake. That is her favorite and we could not find the cake mix for a long time. Then last spring someone at work made some cupcakes for a bake sale and I bought them (not knowing what flavor) I brought them home and DD#1 got all excited when she realized they were cherry chip. So I had to call the co-worker and find out where she got the mix. For DD#1's graduation party we had one small cake made of cherry chip and decorated with a stethoscope and nurse's hat (she plans to go into nursing). I bought 4 boxes of the cake mix and have yet to use any of them - so will at least use one this week.

I have a small tree in my kitchen/breakfast nook and have placed some of our ornaments that are 'gingerbread'- related on that one. It is really the top section of our old tree. I added a few bead necklaces we had in red and green. I also have a wooden cutout gingerbread family that I painted over 20 years ago that are on the ledge by the tree. I have some ornaments that look like cookies hanging from ribbon in the windows and a couple other gingerbread figurines scattered around. Last night I decided I needed gingerbread garlands on each window. So today I dug out some brown (cashmere tan) felt and used the smallest of my wooden figurines to make a pattern. I am going to stuff them and do a blanket stitch in white around the edges. I picked up some ivory sheer ribbon to connect them and also some little buttons for eyes, mouth and nose - and some heart buttons to sew on the chest. I am going to put hearts on some and colored buttons down the front on the others. I think they will be so cute! DH thinks I am crazy and wanted to know when I planned to get that done. It really won't be that hard - most is handsewing so it is easy to take it along and work on the drive to work or at lunch. I guess I need to look through my tealight candles and see if I still have some gingerbread ones so I can burn one when my family gathers here for Christmas.