Gingerbread House of Doom!

Well, not technically doomed, but it certainly got destroyed. Here's Jonathan, Thomas, Jessamy, Catriona, Connor, Xanthe and James undoing all that good work.

The lollies went first, but amazingly, the gingerbread got eaten too.

Creationary is a good game!

You get Lego, you draw a card, and you have to make what the card tells you. While everyone guesses. While mum and dad sip champagne, if it's Christmas day.

Jonathan made a Lego lobster

Our Christmas Gingerbread House

On a hottish day in Perth, I got some of the kids and nieces and nephews to help me making a gingerbread house - we did one two years ago, and it was great fun.

Here's Xanthe, Jessamy and Catriona on the early stages. We just baked everything from scratch, no complicated kits for us, just print out a template and cut the gingerbread... and if it doesn't all come together, use more icing...

Here's the finished house - note that Coles own brand of lollies includes pink and white MUSHROOMS, which make pretty good gardens. Oh, and many of them have caterpillars on them - that's a nod to Absolom, from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

And here's (mostly) my team of helpers. By the time the photo was taken, Jonathan had disappeared, but Mitchell arrived to pose. That's Connor in the middle getting Bunny Ears.

Those curtains again

I suddenly thought it was a good time for another look at those old curtains of ours (one got turned into a softie just recently).

Ah, yes, pretty cute curtains. Green velvet. Quite a few years old, and they don't last forever you know. And this photo was taken a while back, too. Wonder how old it is?

Wait a minute, I just noticed a clue! That's Catriona trying on her first school uniform! She's half way through high school now! Good thing I looked closely.

Our Christmas Tree

It's an ongoing project, because people keep changing it, but this year's Christmas Tree is up. And it's covered mostly in SOFTIES! Many made by young Catriona.

The purple guy up on top is a bit creepy - he's been moved already. The big mouthed guy is frequently found munching on his smaller neighbours.

This little green guy is made out of our old curtains!

An albino WHAT?

One of the kids disappeared to the craft room the other night to do a little sneaky sewing. And it wasn't Catriona. Young Jonathan took a break from on line battling to create an Albino Penguin. He drafted the pattern himself (probably because he's never sat still long enough to look at other people's patterns). It's a little creepy but darned cute.

And here's my attempt at photographing it in a realistic setting - the iPad is standing up, and displaying some wallpaper icebergs!