Oops, something went wrong. If you have been watching this site lately, you have probably wondered what has been happening. After all, you would expect a Christmas blog to at least have an occasional post during the Christmas season, wouldn’t you?

If you were at all concerned that I might have been run over by some crazy reindeer, I can relieve your mind. Everything here is just fine. I just got completely swamped in the Christmas rush. Something had to give and I finally decided that it had to be this blog (as opposed to making money for paying the rent and spending some quality Christmas time with the kids). My sincere apologies.

Anyway, after a while I started to feel so guilty that I didn’t even dare get back online (and the deluge of drug-related spam in my in-folder is rather disheartening - what is it about me that makes anyone think I am in the market???). But today I decided that was just silly. After all, not much longer and the countdown to Christmas will start up again. And what better time to start up with good resolutions than right here and now?

So here we go again - unless of course life gets way too crazy again.

We have finally done it! Our gingerbread house is finished. Rome wasn’t build in a day and neither was our gingerbread house. We actually split the work over four days this year: one each for preparing the dough, cutting and baking the walls, assembling the house and decorating it (the fun part).

We have made gingerbread houses for several years now and I thought I would share those lessons I have learned:

• Don’t even try to make your gingerbread house look like one in the magazines. That will only lead to frustration. Forget trimmings and fancy columns - I count the gingerbread house an architectural success if it stands up and doesn’t look completely lopsided. (Of course this rule doesn’t apply to you if you are an accomplished baker/cake decorator- but in that case you probably won’t be reading these instructions anyway)
• Take your time. This is a big project. The kids won’t have fun if it is turned into a marathon project. Depending on the age of your kids (and your patience level) some steps might be done best without them. I usually get fairly stressed at the assembling stage. Add to that the very hot sugar glue and it isn’t the best activity for little ones. However, everyone can help with the decorating!
• In my experience you have to make a decision: either the gingerbread house walls will be tasty to eat or the house will be sturdy. We have decided to go for the sturdy version (and basically discard the walls after the holidays). To get sturdy walls, just bake them until they are really, really hard.
• Don’t fool around with regular icing for glue to assemble the house. We instead boil sugar with a bit of water until it has a temperature of about 285°. Work quickly (otherwise the sugar will cool off too much and start to crystalize)! This works almost as well as cement (I am still trying to get some spilled drops off the kitchen table).
• However, the most important aspect of building a gingerbread house together as a family is to relax and have fun. Easy as it sounds, for people like me with a competitive/perfectionistic bent is quite difficult. However, practise really makes perfect here. This year I finally stopped worrying about the kids sneezing on the icing, the walls looking a bit bent or the candy sliding out of alignment. As a result, this year’s gingerbread house project was so much more fun than in previous years! The key here really is to enjoy the process and not to focus on the outcome!

Now I better run and take a picture of the finished gingerbread house before the kids eat off all the candy!

I am fairly new at this blogging thing and still continuously surprised by the process. I love getting comments, but lately (let’s say the last week or so) I have been just inundated with spam. Now I am not sure whether that just means the blog is getting a bit more well-known or if it was something I did. I mean, whatever gave anyone the impression that I would want to hype “life-enhancing drugs” - for want of a better description? Amazing.

On a more positive note, I just got my blog listed at MomDot, something I am quite excited about. If you have never heard about them before, here is their own description:

MomDot is a mom blog listing site that is run by mommy bloggers, trisha, alicia, and bridgette.They run contests weekly, reviews on awesome (and not so awesome) products for family and kids, and talk about their lives. But more importantly, they feature bloggers and mom boutiques to give them an avenue to get their name out there, also assisting in google links! You can head out and list your blog for free and talk to them about doing an interview about you. Head on over and see what MomDot is about!

Hopefully, this will increase traffic (though hopefully not spam, I have enough of that already!)

Good morning, Christmas lovers. I just noticed that Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer is hosting a give-away for personalized Christmas cards. I already entered but wanted to give you all a chance to do the same. So if you are like me and need some extra-impetus for getting started on writing your Christmas cards or if you would like to save money this year while still sending out professionally designed cards, go right on over to Shannon’s blog and check this out.

One activity we enjoy as a family that is a great choice for Family Moment Monday is doing a jigsaw puzzle together as a family.
In our case a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle seems to provide just the right kind of challenge. Of course, depending on the age of your family members you may prefer more or less pieces. As a matter of fact, my three-year old is still rather intimidated by larger jigsaw puzzles and prefers to do his own, easier one, next to us.
I have found it rather difficult to find jigsaw puzzles with the right number of pieces that have a subject matter which appeals to children and is easily manageable (what is it with all these jigsaws that show only a big brown horse on a green meadow?). In my experience, more pieces do not necessarily make a jigsaw puzzle too difficult as long as the picture is composed of many different details in distinct colors.
Our favorite family jigsaw puzzle is one I picked up at Disney World last year and gave J. as a Christmas present. It shows many, many Disney characters (Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Mogli, Donald, Aladdin and dozens of others) as well as some Walt Disney World features (Cinderella’s castle, Tree of Life, Splash Mountain etc.). It was a great hit and J. even took it to preschool last year where all the kids enjoyed it. Not only is it comparatively easy to assemble, but it is also a great souvenir from our vacation. We love to listen to our Walt Disney World soundtrack while we work on it (and we have assembled that jigsaw at least 15 times so far).
So if you are stuck for something easy and fun to do with the family, why don’t you get out a jigsaw puzzle and work on it together? And if a trip to Walt Disney World is in your near future, I definitely recommend you pick up the one we bought!

If you have been wondering lately what the “recipe” part of my blog’s subtitle was for you can relax. They are coming right up!

It has been a crazy busy week, not least of all because of our Halloween preparations. We actually didn’t get around to putting the decorations up (including carving our Jack-o-lantern) until the day before. Hopefully, we will do a bit better with Christmas!

I really like a very easy decoration I made out of corrugated cardboard two years ago and thought I would share it with you here. You don’t really need instructions, just follow the visual.

I used a plate to get the yellow circle for the moon. Draw on a scary face, stick on a couple of bats and there you go.

Now, for me the funnest part of Halloween are the spooky foods. I bought a little recipe booklet (you know the kind they sell at the check-out counter at the grocery store) years ago, and we’ve tried out most of the recipes by now. This year we were under a lot of time constraints and the main criteria for choosing dishes was how easy and fast they were.

Here some quick and fun ideas:

Drinks:
We like to serve “poison” (apple juice with green food coloring) and “blood” (blood orange juice). In the right containers they look suitably spooky and always garner a lot of comments. Tone the spookiness down for very little kids though as they will otherwise refuse to touch the drinks/foods!

Foods:

• Raw veggies for dipping


Always popular (a good choice for guests who are allergic, vegetarian or health-conscious) they provide some color and arranged nicely go well with Halloween. They are also inexpensive and easy to prepare. Add in a dip or two and you are all set!

• Bones and Blood

I have had a lot of success with plain breadsticks that are somewhat formed to resemble bones. Most kids love plain breadsticks whereas more complicated foods (even though really nifty to look at) are a bit more iffy. I like to serve these breadsticks with “blood” (some sort of tomato sauce, marinara works well).


• Ghost Sandwiches
  1. Lightly toast several slices of toast bread.
  2. Use a sharp knife to cut a ghost shape out of each slice (if you have a cookie cutter in a ghost shape your job will be even easier)
  3. Spread with cream cheese and put raisins on for eyes and mouth.

A really spooky and easy treat.

• Spider Web Cookies
  1. Prepare your favorite butter cookie dough (or buy some)
  2. Divide in portions, roll into a ball, flatten and use your hands to create a spider-web shape. Make sure to create a bit of a bump along the outside.
  3. Spread inside of web with apricot jam.
  4. Bake 15 minutes at 350° (or according to your cookie directions).
  5. Cool off and then use either melted chocolate or black icing to pipe on the web design.

Easy and delicious.

• Bat Cake
  1. Prepare your favorite cake (this year we were in such a rush that I actually resorted to a purchased cake mix.)
  2. Bake as per directions. Either a rectangular cake form or a heart shaped one (we used the later as I lost the rectangular one recently) work well.
  3. Once the cake is cooled off, cut into a bat shape (If you have the time, remember that cakes are best cut when frozen.)
  4. Cover with melted chocolate and decorate with icing and/or sweets.

A nice additon to our Halloween table that we made the first time this year.



All in all, our Halloween party was quite successful. The work was manageable and the kids really had a good time.

Shannon at Rocks in my dryer is hosting its weekly Works-for-me-Wednesday, and I decided to take part with a really nifty trick I learned recently.

I don’t know about you, but one of my pet peeves is the caps lock key on my computer. I don’t mind that it is practically useless (Let’s face it - unless you are really into abbreviations you hardly ever need it). What is a bit of wasted space on the keyboard; I have dozens of keys on mine that I neither use nor even know what they are for. Those don’t bother me a bit. Live and let live, I say.

Unfortunately, the lock-caps key is different. It doesn’t like being neglected. Even if you don’t (intend to) use it, it will find a way to see some action. Depending on your typing style and the lay-out of your keyboard that may be a very minor issue - or not. With my new computer it actually isn’t that bad. On the old laptop I would constantly push that key by accident. If you are in a hurry (and which mom isn’t when finally finding a moment to write a post) you end up writing several words (or more) in all capitals. Unless you just happened to be typing SOMETHING OF MAJOR importance, that means you have to go back, delete and retype. Grr. Just thinking about it is a nuisance.

Wouldn’t it be great to just get rid of that silly caps-lock key? Well, now you can. I recently found a website where you can download a small computer program that will get rid of the dratted key for you. Of course, the key will still be there, but it will be mercifully dead.

If you are getting excited at the idea, here a small caveat. First, I am not a computer expert. I used the program, it got rid of the caps-lock function for me and no disaster happened. However, I can not guarantee that your computer won’t go up in smoke if you try the same. It is a reputable website and I think the gain is worth the small risk you have whenever you try a new program on the computer. But it is of course up to you.
Also, the website is in German. That needn’t bother you though as it is quite easy to install:

1. Go to the CHIP online website and click on the blue rectangle that says “Zum Download” (You have to do this rather quickly as the website will otherwise change=
2. Install the program as you would any other.
3. Run the program. You will see an interface with various options to choose from. Click on number 8 to completely disable the caps-lock function
4. Reboot your computer.

And there you have it - no more nuisance caps-lock key. Presumably, you can run the program again and by choosing the first option regain the caps-lock function. Just in case you can’t live without A LARGE NUMBER OF CAPITAL LETTERS.

Well, we left it too late and now there isn’t really time to get any new costumes for Halloween. Luckily, both boys seem quite happy to wear the ones from last year and the year before (and the year before and the year before in the case of J.).

I am extra happy about that, because making the costumes was quite a bit of work - especially the bear costume (you can’t tell on the picture but it is an overall). I am not a very proficient seamstress - as a matter of fact, these costumes are pretty much the only things I have sewed in the last five years or so. Actually, I was about ready to throw the sewing machine out the window while wrestling with the bear costume, broken needles and all. Luckily, they turned out okay, inspite of my less than professional sewing skills.
Anyway, looks like I am getting my wish and we really get quite a bit of use out of these costumes.

Just a quick note for those of you who have friends (or whatever) overseas that you want to send something to for the holidays. Here you will find a chart to tell you when international mail is due at the post office.

The other day I got this nifty catalogue in the mail, with lots of great toys, clothes and craft materials. Unfortunately, I do not think they deliver to the US, but if you are interested anyway you can take a look here at

Jako-o.

I really liked the look of the arts and crafts project you see on their site (at least you should see it if you clicked on the above link). Now, money being somewhat tight, I was too cheap to buy the kit, but I did use the idea for some inspiration. You can easily do the same thing and make some of these “fake gingerbread cookies” from readily available material (which is all to the good because as I said before I don’t think the company delivers overseas).

Here is what you need:

• Pieces of felt in brown, tan and whichever other colors you like
• Puffy paint for decorating
• Glue, scissors, cardboard, some sort of ribbon

And now for the instructions:

1. Make some cardboard templates for the decorations. The idea is to make them look like gingerbread cookies so hearts, rectangles, rings, circles etc. work good (and are easy to make). If you have some fair-sized cookie cutters you could also use these to trace around.
2. Trace the above templates on felt, cut out and paste together in layers. If you happen to have fairly stiff felt that should do it. If you are afraid that your felt is too thin you can always glue in a cardboard layer to make the ornaments more sturdy
3. Use pieces of felt or puffy paint to draw on “icing” and other decorations.
4. Put a ribbon through the top for hanging up.

As you see it is a really easy craft project that can be shared with the kids. It is inexpensive (All you need is a bit of felt and if you are like me you probably have that lying around somewhere anyway) and looks kind of nifty.

Oops, I got to go. The kids are doing a science experiment and are trying to make a magnet out of a magnetized needle floating in a bowl of water. Unfortunately, the needle seems to be pointing due west (?) I’d better go and find out what is going on (wish I had paid more attention back in physics class).