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Showing posts from December, 2007

Wedding Flowers

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On Dec. 8th I made the bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres for a wedding in our ward. I was terribly nervous about it because I hadn't done anything like it for 10 years since the bridesmaids' bouquets in my own wedding. So I called my Aunt Rosemary who gave me lots of good tips, and then got Mindy Clary to come over and show me how to do the corsages and boutonnieres on the 8th. Mindy was invaluable not only for her knowhow (she worked in a floral shop for 4 years) but also as floral psychologist (she just stayed calm and told me how to fix fiascos). Here is one of the bridal bouqets. And examples of the corsages and boutonnieres. As you can see, it snowed all day Saturday, which I used to my advantage. I opened the windows and kept the basement like a refrigerator to keep everything fresh. It was nasty for driving, but we found out that Rob's truck has 4-wheel drive and works wonderfully in the snow. It was all a good learning experience, but I am SO glad that it's

Gingerbread House 2007

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Here is this year's vintage of gingerbread house. We did one at my house every year growing up with this recipe and this pattern. I've given myself years off when we used a kit, but I managed to bake the real stuff this time around. We did the decorating for FHE, not least because Rob is a patient artist with the frosting. I hate royal icing because of the taste of it from childhood and the impossible consistency of it from adulthood. Rob and I agreed that it would probably hold one of our 15 lb bathroom tiles in place unless it got wet. I like this year's version a lot. Maddie make the buttermint chimney almost all by herself. Will made the pretzel and lifesaver fence with Rob, and Sebastian was responsible for the mint chips on the ice cream cone trees. I did the roof with red and green gummy shingles which looked successful, but there are now three missing. Important part of a child's Christmas to filch candy off the gingerbread house, don't you think? We alway

Maddie's Prose Poem

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Maddie Lou is a busy woman this year. She's dancing twice a week, learning to step-ball-change and cha, cha, cha for her performance next February. She goes to show choir at 8:00am twice a week, and often has 8- or 9-hour days by the time she gets home. She's doing her homework almost entirely on her own (yay!) and gets stellar reports back from her teacher. And she's still a reader. On Thursday she received Elizabeth, one of the American Girl dolls, as a prize for having passed off her multiplication tables. When I walked past her room 5 minutes later, Maddie was reading the book on Elizabeth and the doll was on the bed. I love it. You can see the reader in Maddie's vocabulary. She uses words we didn't teach her, and uses them correctly in a sentence. But she's not always sure of the pronunciation since she's never heard them. During the storm on Thursday night, Maddie wrote a poem we wanted to share: Hail and Snow First there was hail, falling in cubes. &q