Thursday, December 15, 2011

Gingerbread Tablescape

I love Gingerbread Men and Gingerbread Girls and Gingerbread Houses!  They are just so darn cute and fun and they just make me smile when I see them.  I have had several gingerbread decorations around the kitchen for several years, many of them Wonder Hubby and I made together.  He is the cutter and I'm the painter.  Despite my love of them, my kitchen Christmas decor started out with an Old Worldish Santa tree and I always made that my kitchen theme and just scattered gingerbread items here and there.

With my new found love of collecting Fiesta Ware, I realized they are perfectly suited to a Gingerbread theme, so this year I am giving the Gingerbread theme 1st position in the kitchen (well for a few days anyway, I have too many dish options to go with one theme!). 

Let me give you a little tour.

Room shots shows my Fiesta Ware Gingerbread table, my Fiesta Ware collection in the china hutch and my Gingerbread tree.

The table topper is from my days of owning a retail shop....I knew being a pack rat with that stuff would pay off someday!  I love how the Fiesta Ware picks up all the colors of the topper.  The topper is very glittery, wish that showed up better in pictures. 


I love, love, love the mugs!  They too are leftovers from the store, they are from Burton and Burton, love their things.  The napkins just arrived day before yesterday from Sherry, aka The Hawaiian Heifer.  She is the most thoughtful person I know and she thought these napkins would work with my Fiesta, she was right!

The cutey patootie spreaders are from Kohls, a gift from Wonder Hubby a couple of years ago.

The Gingerbread couple are Wonder Hubby and my originals, oldies but cuties! 

I relocated the snowman that belongs in the centerpiece and replaced him with a peppermint stand platter from Burton and Burton and a cutie pie Gingerbread house from Kohls.  Love me some Kohls.  It isn't complete but I couldn't wait to share! teeheehee!

While we are taking a tour I will show you a bit of the other Gingerbread decor in my kitchen.
The Gingerbread men on the window sill were made by Wonder Hubby and I several years ago...I love how they are holding the lights. You can see another painted birdhouse/gingerbread house from years gone by on the shelf to the right.  The Gingerbread cookie platter is one of my favorites.  Oh, who am I kidding, I love them all! You can see a bit of the Merry Christmas blocks I made last year on the window sill.

Although this shot is a bit blurry you can see the Gingerbread bowl that matches the platter and another of my Gingerbread boys.  The little sleigh in the right corner of the pic is filled with clay Gingerbread boys I made and painted years ago.

The Gingerbread house in this picture has been making an appearance for years.  BDJ made this long, long ago in 2nd or 3rd grade, he is 22 now...I still love it!

Of course there is my Gingerbread tree

Oh and Mini's house is a semi-gingerbread type house

I hope you enjoyed my little tour of my very own Gingerbread heaven, thanks for stopping by.

I am linking to Tablescape Thursday at Between Naps on the Porch please visit to see all the beautiful tables!


Sunday, December 4, 2011

Birdhouse to Gingerbread Beauty

First let me say that I will admit to being a Christmas nut. I have 8 Christmas trees and a couple in the attic waiting for a chance to shine.   This year I decided to expand my gingerbread themed kitchen tree.   This tree was my only tabletop tree and it was loaded with goodies, too loaded actually.  I really love gingerbread and wanted to expand this tree this year so I stole the 7 1/2 foot slim tree from my dining room to use.

Now that I had the right tree for my space I realized that I might not have enough decorations!  I had seen a tree somewhere in blogland that featured a large gingerbread house as the treetopped and knew I wanted to steal try out that idea here.  Outside of running out to shop for gingerbread houses where could I get my tree topper?  I have been in quite the painting mood lately and remembered I had a really tired birdhouse waiting for a makeover that might work. 

Here she is in all her crackeled, broken in spots glory.


First I did some heavy duty cleaning and then I painted her Nutmeg Brown.
Several times!  Since this was a multi day project, as luck would have it the next morning I had to make a Michaels run and found these little beauties for $1.00.

I managed to drag out this painting for two days (it was so on purpose cause I love to paint!)   I found some blank wood candy pieces of my garage organization I posted here  and used those on my large birdhouse.  Then I did lots of painting dots and candy canes and peppermints and gum drops.  Then layering on Dimensional Glitter snow (I love playing with this stuff) and finally lots of spray adhesive and then lots and lots and lots of glitter!  I LOVE playing with glitter and right now my floors reflect that love.  After a good bit of tweaking the glitter I was finally happy with them.  Ready, here they are in all their glittery goodness!  I am going to apologize in advance for the pics...I was just so excited to share they are okay at best.  I will be posting more pics and info about this tree at some point during the holidays.




Here they are on my tree....LOVE!


I hope you enjoyed my makeover and a bit of my holiday mania, thanks for visiting.  I am linking up with Susan at Between Naps on the Porch, please visit and take a look at all the goodies.