How to Celebrate Christmas in Florida - Part Deux...

So a couple of weeks ago the girls decorated gingerbread houses. I had gotten kits this year from Target. They are actually Halloween houses but I just mad some white royal icing and covered up all the orange that they had used to put the house together with. We bought new candies and away they went! They were each control of their own house and got to decorate it however they wanted.
Here are a few photos of the process!




And here are the finished houses! The first one is Kaitlyn's!
This is the front... There are 4 marshmallow snowmen, one for each of us in the family. and in the back of the house there is a candy cane palm tree because after all we live in Florida now! She was a bit concerned about having snow and a palm tree at the same time. But she quickly decided that you can not have a gingerbread house with out snow so it will just have to do!


And this is the back...








Here is Keeley's house. First photo is the front and second is the back...

The weather is back Oregon summer temps again. The cool only lasted one night and a day. But we enjoyed it all quite a lot. It is so refreshing to have a bit of a chill in the air. You never even think about it or realize it till you don't have it. Any way because of this crazy warm weather in December it has been really hard to really truly feel like it is Christmas time. I feel like we are just pretending and playing along. But I have made a big effort to decorate our apartment anyway. Here are a few photos of the decorations that I have put up this year. The first one is just a wall of photos that I have up. I cut some Christmas scrapbook papers to fit right over the photos and then added a few decoration to the shelves. I also made that little be merry garland this year. Our tree. This is our first ever artificial tree. This had been really hard for me to get used to. I really like the real ones but they are just so stinking expensive here that I could not do it. But I got a steal of a deal on this tree the day on black Friday!

These are some cool letter clings that I found at Target. I really really like them! They came in a big pack with several words. They have really helped to liven up our plain all white apartment! I have them on all the upper kitchen cabinets and on the front door and some on the bathroom mirror. Also you can see some snowflakes that I hung up over our bar where the gingerbread houses are!

This is a close up of the little trees that are next to the front door. And a little tomtin man hiding out in the trees!

And I think that these may be mu favorite decoration this year! I got these awesome vintage mini mercury glass ornaments at a garage sale here this last summer. I got a HUGE 2 gallon ziplock bag FULL of them for a steal of .50 cents!! I almost had a heart attack when the lady sold them to me for only .50! I found the dark green cast iron thing that is holding some of them at Salvation army for a buck and the other green glass was one that Al had from his grandmother. I love how they look sitting on the bar next to the houses! Just love it!!! Believe it or not there are still more in the bag. I will have to come up with more ideas to display them for next year!
Anyway this is my effort to make things festive in our new home. I think that i t may be working, at least for the girls. they sure are excited for Christmas! We spent all day yesterday before I went to work in the evening making cookies for friends and Santa! We still have a couple more to make but the bulk of it is done!
I hope that you enjoyed looking at our decorations.
And wish you all a Merry Christmas!