I rarely do TWO blog posts in one day and I was going to skip out on this Christmas Pajama Party Link-Up with Darci at The Good Life, Fancy Ashley, Jenny Collier, Girl in the Red Shoes and Hello Happiness, BUT I couldn’t resist a Pajama party consisting of Christmas PJ’s! Oh, heck no!!!
If you follow me on Instagram, you may remember this photo I shared of an adorable sock monkey night gown that I found at Cracker Barrel. I love to look around all of the Christmas merchandise at Cracker Barrel, but after about size 5T… you are out of luck! SO, I purchased the adorable night gown for Autumn, but needed to find something for Nathan still. I looked and looked, but a lot of the cute Christmas PJ’s were sold out. I landed up buying him plaid PJ pants in flannel and a red shirt at Target. Its super comfy and flannel and plaid makes me think of Christmas! Plus, it goes well with the colors in her PJ’s.
So, last night Elfie and Samantha Elf (I have an Elf on the Shelf post coming up on Friday, so if you don’t follow me on IG, you’ll get all the details then!) decided to decorate the kitchen table for the gingerbread village! We decided to assemble the 4 little houses the night before so that they would have time to harden before the kids decorated them. This worked like a charm and also saved us a lot of time, when all the kids really want to do is decorate them. I bought extra candy for decorating and set down a plate and put two of the small homes on each plate. The plates had compartments so the houses fit in their own compartment and then I put a spoon on the smaller compartment for them to use to scoop candy onto their plate to use for decorating. This worked out really well and the plates caught all of the flying/loose candy pieces.
I scattered mini marshmallows all over the table to mimic snow. The marshmallows were used to decorate the houses, too!
Nathan is so silly, he thought this house was an OUT HOUSE (ahhh, 7 year old minds!). He wanted to decorate it first, of course. Nathan is not really into art or crafts, so I was really surprised with how long this kept his attention and how much he enjoyed it.
I didn’t buy special containers to put the candy in, I just used small bowls I had around the kitchen. I have a ceramic owl measuring cups set I got from Williams & Sonoma that I love and I put a lot of the candy in those bowls.
Of course, I had to get a picture of Autumn’s cute little hand holding her gingerbread house.
The finished gingerbread village. I had originally planned for us to each do one, but the kids landed up doing two each! It was a lot of fun! I love to try out different gingerbread kits, we have done a train one and now the village. We have done the regular gingerbread house as well… I saw a DISNEY PRINCESS CASTLE gingerbread kit at Cracker Barrel, I was so tempted, but didn’t buy it.
Here is Autumn by herself with the gingerbread village (Nathan was busy studying for a social studies test at the time!)
And here they are, my sweeties by their extra sweet gingerbread village! Now… I just need to wait to see if they’ll want to eat the candies off them or not!
And, I had to get a better photo of the little sock money pockets on Autumn’s night gown? Adorable, aren’t they?!! I heard that they have Elf on the Shelf PJ’s now… oh, that is tempting for next year!
Thanks for stopping by! Please let me know what you think!
