Author: Launi

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Three More Filled Glass Ornaments

#1 Sea of Galilee Glass Ornament

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This one is filled with decorator sand and tiny shells…

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…and topped with this sweet inscription on a small piece of parchment.

#2 Scented Glass Ornament

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This one is filled with potpourri. As the room warms up the scent fills the air. Each year, refresh the fragrance with scented oil–anything from roses to evergreen trees.

#3 Popping Fresh Glass Ornament

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This one is my personal favorite…made by Sue Brandon or Orem. She took off the hanger and put 6 or 7 popcorn kernals in the small sized ornament…and then…she put it in the MICROWAVE! Can you believe it? She said she waited until she heard 2 or 3 pops and took it out. But you don’t have to tell the secret—let everyone wonder how you got that popcorn in there!

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Covered Glass Ornaments

These made a wonderful–last minute cub scout project. All you need is Christmas tissue paper, a small paint brush and Elmer’s glue. Squeeze the glue into a milk cap and add a drop or two of water to make it thinner and “paintable.”

Tear or cut up tissue into small 1/2 to 1 inch pieces. Paint a small amount of glue onto the ornament and pick up a piece of tissue with the sticky brush and paste it on. Continue to paste until ornament is covered. Allow ornament to dry in a paper cup. You can spray with a shiny acrylic coat if you want. We just left ours plain.

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Gracious Giveaway!

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This week’s Gracious Giveaway is a Four Pack of Family Night Lessons, valued at $14.00, from Crafty Copies of Orem, Utah. Sue has generously included 4 of her best lessons as the prize package for Gracious Rain readers.

The titles are:

Christmas #1 “Come Let Us Adore Him”

Christmas #2 “Give Yourself Away”

Christmas #3 “There Shall Be No Darkness”

“Making Home A Heaven On Earth”

The packets are not only filled with sweet lessons and stories, but also games and activities to help your family find greater joy in time spent together.

All you have to do to enter is click on the words, CRAFTY COPIES. It will take you to the site. Check it out. Come back and post a comment here telling us your favorite item from the Games and Activities page of the Crafty Copies online store. These Family Night lessons would make a great Christmas gift for someone on your list!

I’ll announce the winner on Saturday.

Good Luck!!

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Gingerbread House Festival

With my dad being the official “Gingerbread Man” in these parts–we couldn’t stand to let the season go by without that cinnamon and cloves scent in the air. So the girls got together at daddy’s shop…

And made a busload of honeycake dough.

The official recipe is called Lebkuchen. It’s a very stiff dough, so daddy’s mixer came in pretty handy. My little Kitchen Aid would have been smoking with this stuff.

Each one of these dough balls will make one pan.

One pan will make one house.

Here they are after being baked and cut and stacked.

Each of us had our own idea of what the “perfect” candy was–so when we got together on Daddy’s birthday, to actually put the houses together we had a ton of candy.  Just looking at all this stuff gave me a sugar rush. It must have been the vapor of sweetness in the air.  :]

**The most important tip for having a successful gingerbread house experience is to decorate the front, back and sides of your house BEFORE you put the pieces together.

This will save you from having to work in tight, crazy places and also keep you from knocking your house down while trying to glue candy to an upright house–not cool.

Once you paste the house together, then you’re ready to frost the top. We use Royal Icing to glue it all together and Fluffy White for the roof and yard “snow.” April is really good with the icicles. Me…not so much.

So, here are the results of our Gingerbread fest.

April’s professional house

Jacob’s house–ready for snow!

december-12-2008-025Lyndi’s Orange Tree House

december-12-2008-027Lyndi’s stained glass star

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Rhen’s Angry House…don’t ask. You missed the Teddy Graham hanging from the rafters and the snowman with a rifle. It was not pretty. I should have known there was just too much laughter coming from his end of the table. Boys can be so odd.

december-12-2008-0211My silly little house with pink malt balls. Ummmm…. Note: Cream Savers are not particularily good team players. They slid off my roof all night. They get a D in behavior and staying put.

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Pretty crazy about that chimney though.

presents-029Jillian’s Whoville House

presents-032Back of the Whoville House

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Our very own Gingerbread Babies and their first taste of Great-Grampa’s Honey Cake. Setting it into their DNA very early on.

Daddy would be so proud!!

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Sue Sheets…because she remembers.

We’ve been translated into French!! See this post on Blue Marguerite.

 

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Honey Cake or Lebkuchen

For everyone looking for “Grampa’s” gingerbread house recipe–this is as close as we’ve been able to come and it works beautifully. The minced fruit and candied peel aren’t in here–but it was nasty anyway. So, your honey cake will probably NOT last until the Millennium…sorry. But dad also added things like powdered ammonia to some of his stuff and who even KNOWS what that was about? I can just hear him laughing his head off at us right now.

“Now, dear…it’s not gingerbread—it’s HONEYCAKE!”

I miss you, daddy. And all the secrets you took with you.  😀

Lebkuchen–Honey Cake

Ingredients:

3 cups sifted flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 cup corn syrup
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tsp grated lemon rind (optional)
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon water

Stir together first 6 ingredients. In 1-quart saucepan, bring corn syrup and sugar to a boil. Cool.

In a large bowl stir together corn syrup mixture, egg, and lemon juice. Gradually stir in flour mixture until well blended. Cover; chill 1 hour or until easy to handle.

Roll out dough 1/4 at a time to 1/4″ thickness onto a well greased cookie sheet.  Bake in 400°F oven 6-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from cookie sheet immediately and place on rack. Cut into cookies or house pieces while it’s still warm.

If cutting into cookies, mix confectioners’ sugar and water. While still warm, brush with glaze.  Cool.

May be stored in tightly covered container for a dang long time.

Makes about 4 dozen.

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Ingredients
  • 3 cups sifted flour
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp ground allspice
  • ½ tsp ground cloves
  • ½ tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1 cup corn syrup
  • ⅓ cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 2 tsp grated lemon rind (optional)
  • ½ cup confectioners' sugar
  • 1 tablespoon water
Instructions
  1. Stir together first 6 ingredients.
  2. In 1-quart saucepan, bring corn syrup and sugar to a boil. Cool.
  3. In a large bowl stir together corn syrup mixture, egg, and lemon juice.
  4. Gradually stir in flour mixture until well blended.
  5. Cover; chill 1 hour or until easy to handle.
  6. Roll out dough ¼ at a time to ¼" thickness onto a well greased cookie sheet.
  7. Bake in 400°F oven 6-10 minutes or until lightly browned.
  8. Remove from cookie sheet immediately and place on rack.
  9. Cut into cookies or house pieces while it's still warm.
  10. If cutting into cookies, mix confectioners' sugar and water.
  11. While still warm, brush with glaze. Cool.
  12. May be stored in tightly covered container for a dang long time.