Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone has had a Very Merry CHRISTmas and I hope each of you have a Happy New Year!!! I will be back after the first of the year will lots of Christmas pictures.



I did want to leave you with one picture. This is one of my favorite pictures and it was taken last New Years Eve.

From our Family to Yours...

Click to enlarge.

Gingerbread

BROWN GINGERBREAD MEN

(Makes 30 ornaments)

1c Sugar

6T Shortening

2t Baking soda

2t Cloves, ground

2t Ginger

2t Cinnamon

7c Flour

1c Water

1/2c Molasses

2T Cocoa powder

Mix shortening and 1 cup of sugar together in a large bowl. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Refrigerate for 4-hours.

Roll dough out on floured surface of wax paper to 1/4-inch thickness. Poke a hole in the top of each cookie with a straw, knife, chopstick, pencil, or similar object.

Put cutouts on cookie sheet and bake 20-minutes in 325-degree oven. After 20-minutes, turn oven off, leaving cookies inside oven to continue the drying process. After 1-hour, move cookies to a rack and allow to sit untouched for 1-3 days or until completely dry and hard.

When cookies are dry, spray with clear acrylic paint or brush with clear varnish and allow cookie coating to dry completely.

***My dough was extremly dry so I added a little more water and Molasses. I also decorated my ornaments with Tulip paint. For other recipies and decorating ideas check out this link.

If you are interested in the crayon bag from my last post please e-mail me at jessaleelangford@hotmail.com. I would love to make you one or share some tips with you so you can make your own.

Crafty Christmas

I teach 4th grade Kid's Praise on Wednesday evenings. I wanted to give each child something for Christmas, so I made these cute ornaments for each student and their families to enjoy. I think making gingerbread cookie ornaments with Miller will be a new tradition we start next year. Not only do they look great but they make the house smell SO good. I was even thinking about having a ALL gingerbread tree next year.



I also had a craving for homemade cookies. They really look better than they taste. Anyone have a great cookie recipe? I would love for you to share!!


Every year I make the little one's in Luke's family a gift. This year I made these crayon bags. I got the idea off a blog I stalk. I filled it with a couple of coloring books and a Veggie Tale DVD.


I took this picture by accident and I loved it. He is such a MESS!!

13 Months

Miller is 13 months old today. He is continuing to grow like a weed. We went for his one year check up on Tuesday. He weighed in at 22 1/2 lbs and 31 3/4 inches long. He is in the 50 percentile for weight, 75 percentile for height, and 100 percentile for head circumference. His one year check up also meant more shots. He cried for only a minute and quickly bounced back to his normal self.

Miller is ALL over the place these days. It is so funny to watch him walk around on his own. He seems so small and young.

He is sleeping better these days than he has in a long time. He has 12 teeth that have caused many cries in the middle of the night. He has slept through the night all week. YEAH!!! I really hope this is here to stay. Along with sleeping better through the night he is also taking better naps. He now takes two, good naps a day... down from 3-4 little cat naps.

He loves to talk. Some new things he can say resemble Good Girl, Gobble Gobble, Thank you, and we are working on HO HO HO.

He loves all the Christmas lights and Ornaments. I had to put a gate around the tree because he kept pulling the ornaments off the tree and playing with the gifts.

Speaking of our tree...
I have been meaning to post pictures our Christmas Decorations. I LOVE the Christmas season. We put our tree up on November 10th and have enjoyed it for over a month. We have 5 trees in our house.

Did I mention I LOVE the Christmas Season!!!

First Artwork

This is what I found this evening when I got home from Bunko. We have the BEST baby sitters. Thanks Meme, Granpa Don, Addie, and Marybeth. Notice his little hands are the antlers. TOO CUTE!!

Let it SNOW!!

It was hard to capture the true beauty of our little snow shower today so just take my word it was peaceful. Since this might be the only Snow we see all winter I wanted to document it.

Happy first day of December!!