Gingerbread Fun

Like most towns in America our downtown area was abandoned in the 70's and 80's and malls were built in the suburbs.  Over the last 15 - 20 years the city council has been trying to attract small business back to downtown.  One area has been pretty successful in the last 5 years and now hosts a whole variety of small shops and restaurants.  One of the businesses is a bakery that makes primarily fancy cakes.  The owner baked gingerbread houses and placed them in 25 - 30 of the shops and businesses on the street and set up a tour map for visitors to come and see them.  The baker decorated each house to look like the store that housed it.  My friend who is entertaining her foreign exchange student and his mother asked my daughter and me to join them for the afternoon and we toured the gingerbread houses.  

I took only a couple of photos, but we had a lot of fun visiting lots of shops and places I had never been in before.  Here are the few photos I took:

This house was at a shop that sells plants and supplies for hydroponic gardening.  Yep - grass on the roof.

Same house, just wanted a better photo of the snowman.

This one is shaped like a handbag for a trendy boutique.

This one is in a bank.  Those are gingerbread men at the front corners.  The initials BMO are on the roof.

A couple of the businesses no longer had their houses as they had been damaged.  When we entered one shop, we looked around for quite awhile and couldn't find the house.  I finally asked the owner where their house was and she sheepishly told me they ate it!!!!  I nearly died laughing.  She said they couldn't always get away to eat lunch, so they started eating the house one little piece at a time.  Ewww!!  Usually those things get so hard and yukky, I can't even imagine wanting to taste them.  I just could not stop telling this story to other people.  

After the tour, our husbands met us and we all went out for dinner at the local brewery.  This is my friend Joyce with her guests trying the local brew.  They also make a terrific root beer which is my drink of choice.

Almost There

I can hardly believe that there are only 2 more days til Christmas.  It seems like December has been a blur, but I have enjoyed every minute of it.  And there is still more to do.  My friend has had a foreign exchange student living with their family for the last 3 years.  This year the young man has started college and is coming back to visit for the holidays and bringing his mother.  She does not speak much English.  I offered to help my friend entertain her guests as the mother would like to experience a traditional American Christmas.  This cracked me up as my friend and her husband are spending Christmas at their son's college dorm.  He is an RA and has to stay at the dorm through the holidays.  After she takes her Christmas dinner to the dorm, they are going to the movies.

I finished my last little snowman block.  See my previous post for the link to this pattern if you would like to make some too.

I also got the binding on this 12" Merry block from the 100 blocks magazines.

When I put this little hanger on the wall, I failed to remember that we move all the furniture so there is room for the Christmas tree.  That means my little quilt will be viewed through the lamp shade!  LOL.  Live and learn.

Hop on over to Judy's blog  to see more great designs.

Photos to Share

Last Sunday we decorated our church sanctuary for Christmas.  I took some photos after it was all done.  The head of our committee is very artistic and has lots of great ideas.  Her husband finally told her that we had to all go home after 4 hours.  He said she would just keep going because she always has another great idea.  We were going for a winter forest theme with lots of little trees.  The Nativity Set is on the altar.

Little wreaths hanging on the paraments.  Little trees in the right corner.

The road to Bethlehem

Green hydrangeas on the tree.  The tree topper is gold, silver, white, and green twigs, feathers,  flowers, and ting ting.