It's the most wonderful time....of the year!

Forget Christmas; CHA is my favorite time of year! I love to see all the sneak peeks from my favorite manufacturers. Here are some of the things that especially caught my eye:

Bella Blvd has some cute new lines and stamps to boot. I think this Mr. Boy line and Family Dynamix stamps are great.

Cosmo Cricket always has fun and whimsical pages. I know I’ll be using a lot of its Sea Garden for summer pages. I’m also digging CC’s new Grubers. A fabulous new concept in embellie-making.

Little Yellow Bicycle always has the most darling baby lines. I’ve only seen a little peek, but I already know I love Babysaurus.

　 

Maya Road carries the best chipboard in the biz. I love that it’s raw and open for altering any way we choose. So many terrific new chippies. Here’s one:



And Websters Pages. Wow, their sneaks are never ending and each just fabulous. Can’t wait til they make their way to a store near me.

The Kit Kat "Gingerbread" House - Crafts With Kids

I remember as a small child being so excited to make a gingerbread house with my Grandma. Then being disappointed that it tasted so awful! So this Christmas, I wanted to make a holiday house with my toddler that would be fun to make, pretty to see and yummy to eat. So, I settled upon making a “gingerbread” house using kit kat bars, a family favorite.

To make the house, I drew a template on the back of a cereal box. I measured it so that the house was two kit kat bars long (on each side) and one kit kat bar wide (for the front and back of the house) with a roof that was 1/2 a kit kat high. Then I cut out the template and taped it together to form a house. With this design, I needed 8 Kit Kat bars.

I used a tube of white Wilton icing to “glue” the Kit Kat bars to the house and roof. Then, I began decorating. I used mini Hershey bars, peppermint Lifesavers, sour twists and M&Ms. I decorated the house by adding paper snowflakes to the roof and a snowman to the yard. I placed the house on a sheet of patterned paper which I had covered in modge podge to prevent the candy oils from seeping onto the paper. After the paper dried, I glued it to cardboard to make a sturdy “yard” for the house.

 

I used patterned paper from Little Yellow Bicycle, the Savor line, for the yard, snowman and snowflakes. If you have any questions about this project, feel free to contact me.