Christmas Putz Village

My very first Putz Village! I'm very happy with it. I'm so excited to finally use the little white plastic tree I got at the $1 and Up store in Escondido. And I think the gingerbread house looks great as the center piece of the village.

I actually had a very hard time forresting my village. For some reason I really thought it needed more trees and I became obsessed. But, I guess everyone else was too, because everywhere I went was mostly sold out of Christmas village trees. I got a couple from Dollar Tree and a few from the Mission-building section at Michael's. And I was just kinda OK with my sparse foliage. But a few days ago I was wandering around Big Lots and I found a 16-piece tree set for only $5!

Even without the lights on, I think the village looks much better with lots of trees!

The first house I made was the picture window house. I made it at the same time that I made the Halloween picture window house. I really like it, but I do I wish I would have listened to Howard's suggestions and started with the begginner cottage.

This is the Peach Beach Cottage from Howard's Sandy Shores Structures. I added snow and lots of glitter and made it a Christmas village house. I made a loofah tree following Papa Ted's new tree tutorial.

The Little Charmer also has a loofah tree in it's front yard. It's by far my favorite house in the village. I pretty much copied Howard's color-scheme exactly.

The beginner cottage is actually yellow with a blue roof, but all the glitter makes it hard to see the colors. The snowman and icy tree are both from Dollar Tree.

I also made the church conversion. We're not a religious household, but I do think the church is really cute. So I just made the upstairs window round like all the rest of the houses instead of a cross.

The Bay Window house is so cute! I love the way it sits centered on it's foundation so I put a tree in each corner of the front yard.

Christmastime

Most of my supplies for extra curricular activities are in storage while we're in the condo including my gingerbread house cookie mold. So this year I decided to do it the old-fashioned way and design and build a gingerbread house from scratch. I used a recipe I found online and cut out the pieces based on a paper pattern I drafted.

I won't use that gingerbread recipe again, the one that came with my cookie mold is much better. The pieces weren't as strong as I like and they warped A LOT! But I trudged on. The over-hang on the roof was a little lacking and the front of the house was far from straight.

I did use the royal icing recipe that I always use. And, once it's covered with icing and candy, the house doesn't look too bad. I also bought a box of Pepperidge Farm ginger family cookies and stuck them in the front yard. They're cute, but there is no way they'll fit in their house. :)

We also got the tree out of storage and crammed it in to our tiny little living room. I'm so happy with how our new tree skirt turned out! I LOVE the Alexander Henry Yuletide 2D Zoo fabric I ordered from Etsy. It's the perfect combination of traditional Christmas and whimsy. Plus it doesn't smell like cat pee!