gingerbread houses!

Since the dawn of time we have always done our gingerbread houses with our old neighbors, our Fitzs. Or at least since the dawn of having a child. Same thing. This year we just couldn't make it happen and so it was just a solo affair, us Olsens. And three kits from the local grocery store. Not the caliber of a Steph creation but hey, you do what you can. 

Those kits are actually pretty fantastic and the kids had a great time making each one their own... and of course eating some candy and icing along the way. I don't even mind having their houses lined up on the school desks in the playroom! 

tiny town

I just love this place at Christmas time! Every last little building is decorated with garlands and lights and wreaths and it just makes me happy. My mom and sister and sister-in-law and assorted kids met us all there as well! As we tend to do!

crinkle cake cookies - for christmas!

Love me a good alliteration. 

I made these for the home tour because they were easy and festive and they were such a big hit! I haven't given out a recipe that often in quite a long time! So I figured I would share it here as well. I doubled the recipe and got about four dozen cookies, depending on how big you make your balls. Ahem.

ladies who ornament at potteryworks

We always make ornaments. Every year, it never fails. I mean, it fails.... They rarely turn out like their Pinterest versions but we sure laugh trying! This year someone had the idea to head into Potteryworks and take an already made ornament and just paint it! Make a day out of it! How can we go wrong!? We left the boys and Audrey at home because well... bulls in a China shop, my boys.

A few of us chose to do just balls with a fun crackle glaze, my mom after much deliberation chose a stocking and Mikayla chose a Rudolph.  Just to give her mother some gray hairs and really test her patience. A week later we were able to pick them up! After painting and some issues with a parking meter we had ourselves a nice little lunch, just us girls. Some of these photos are taken by my sister-in-law and sister!

week one of our advent calendar

So we are (almost) a week into our advent calendar. Just crossing things off my festive to do list one day at a time! Annnnd this is what we did!

Day one was game night! Which I moved around a bit and made it a game afternoon. We never play games. Literally never. It never ends well. And it doesn't take me too long to remember why. But we played a few games. Fought a few times. Pouted even more times. And done.