It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

Today is December 5th.  There are 20 more days until Christmas!  Are you done with your shopping?  Or are you like Jeremy and me, and have you not even started yet? :)  Have you sent your Christmas cards yet?  Or are you, once again, like Jeremy and me, and have you not even bought them yet? :)  Oh well, none of that matters because it’s Christmas!!

We bought our Christmas tree on Tuesday, but just got around to getting it decorated last night (we may have been slightly distracted by the Wii that we purchased).  It’s a beautiful 8 foot tall Noble Fur and it smells wonderful.  Here is a picture of it in all it’s glory!

In addition to getting the tree up and decorated, Jeremy put lights on the house.  We’ve never had lights on the house before because A) this is our first Christmas in THIS house and B) we thought we’d get in trouble by the rental company if we put lights up on the rental house that we used to live.  So, this was quite the exciting event for us…ok, maybe just for me.  We have lights on the ground level of the house, rope lights around our pillars, colorful lights on our yard tree, a reindeer and a red and green bulb in each of our porch lights.  Ta-da!

Speaking of Christmas decorations, check out this gingerbread house!

Pretty impressive, right?  Guess who made it.  Did you guess?  Well, you’re probably not right, so I’ll just tell you.  My co-workers and I made this!  Can you believe it??  I really think I’m still in shock that it turned out this good. 

You see, every year we have a Christmas party for the students that work in our office.  There is always some type of “crafty” thing for the students to do, and this year it involved gingerbread houses.  Well, before we knew it, and with the help of a co-worker, we quickly turned it into a competition, more specifically a “Gingerbread Throwdown!” (Yes, it was my idea and watch Food Network too much.)  The competition was broken down into three teams: the Admissions Staff (my team!), the Admissions students and International Admissions.  Anyways, to make a long story short…I created some rules (all the contents of one gingerbread kit must be used, aviation theme, 75% edible, etc.), trash talking between students and staff started, and the competition was on. 

Unfortunately though, everyone on my team lost enthusiasm for it and at the beginning of the week none of us wanted to do it, including me who was in charge of baking the house.  However, come Thursday morning when we all forced smiles on our faces and started decorating, things made a positive change and viola, our gingerbread house, complete with a  sea plane even, was finished!  As you can see from the picture, there is the main house (there are stained glass windows on the sides and back), the garage, magical fruit trees (we had Runt candies we had to use), a Twix chimney, and a sea plane!  Also, though you can’t see it, there is an “air conditioning unit” in the back (a.k.a. where the battery pack for the lights inside the house went) and it was surrounded by a graham cracker picket fence!  Needless to say, we won the Gingerbread Throwdown and I’m still in awe of the mad gingerbread house skills that some of my co-workers possess.

20 days until Christmas!!