It was Christmas Craft time this past Friday - Gingerbread houses to be exact!  Bought a couple Wilton's kits a week or two ago and thought it would be loads of fun for the boys to do.

Mid decorating, once the houses were put together.

Youngest adding decorating candy to "their" house!

(yes, decorating candy - tastes bad but looks pretty on this sort of thing)

More additions to the house!

First house put together!  Looks pretty bad from the

other sides as it was hard to find the right consistency

of frosting to hold the ginger bread together.

Boys finished project!  Looks a lot better than the other one!

Lessons Learned:

• don't plan to eat these and use super glue to hold house together
• probably does pay to trim the house part to a bit more square ~ I'd thought I could easily figure out the right consistency of frosting and use enough to keep it up (WRONG)
• have ginger bread cookies available to eat while working on houses as the house smells good enough to eat
• have a few bowls worth of different consistency of frosting; it will be helpful!

 

Lessons Learned

We've been home from Richmond less than 24 hours, so it seems appropriate to write about my lessons learned. So here they are, in no particular order:

• don't make eye contact with the vendors unless you are interested in their product
• Old Navy flip flops are not good for that much walking (last years Wal-Mart flip flops were better)
• as much as I dislike the "home school" carts you see there, they don't wear your shoulder out while carrying the curriculum you've purchase
• making reservations in January/February ensures that you get an early entrance to the used curriculum sale AND reservations at a close hotel
• know how much items cost, at the cheapest vendor/retailer BEFORE, going down. You can price shop for new/used curriculum being more knowledgeable
• know where you can pick up a free wifi signal, in case you want to double check a price before buying
  
• hit Rainbow Resources early on the second day = not many people or the homeschool carts you trip over
• Yes, just about all vendors have no s/h on items if they have run out of items before the end of convention, so if you don't need an item right away it's no big deal
• remember to drink LOTS of water
• with a hotel room close, with a fridge and microwave, you can eat lunch and dinner super cheap (2 people + 4 meals = under $10.00)

There you have it, some of my lessons learned. Part two of 2010 convention will be items we bought.