Christmas Eve. Gingerbreads.

What a busy day for me Christmas Eve always is. We always finish this day with a special evening supper with everybody in the family gathered at the table. This year it has been different to me - I've stayed in the UK to celebrate Christmas with my bf. It will be a fusion of cultures at our place - Christmas Eve in the Polish style, Christmas day with the British roast dinner and the whole house has been decorated in.... (surprise! surprise!) Scandi theme (I'm soooo lovin' it!) It will be a quiet Christmas for us and hopefully nice and relaxing. The New Years eve should, hopefully, be the same. I'm definitely more chilled about not having to worry about my flights and the worsening weather conditions as currently there have been some issues with the British airports, flight cancellations, power cuts and all.

Today I've done a lot of baking. Done my "signature" cream-filled cake with the meringue top plus baked the spiced biscuits. I so much love the aroma of the freshly baked cakes and biscuits. It's nice, it's warm, it's cosy and festive then.There's been some gingerbread decorating too which I always find great fun to do. I ended up with the 4 full platters of the gingerbread people! That's almost like a gingerbread village!

I like the white icing on the gingerbreads best - such a charming classic decoration but I, of course, couldn't resist throwing in some coloured icing too. I'm pretty confident with my piping skills - my acquired glass painting skills of piping the relief paste onto glass turned out to be very useful at the biscuits decorating. So I was pleased with myself.

And here's the big festive tin with my little fellas inside:

(By the way, anybody recognizing a festive motif from an old Christmas song? Not telling you the answer tho! ;P )

Oh, do you know that story of a Gingerbread man? Surely you do.

"Run! Run! As fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

We've done the gingerbread topic with kids at school so many times that I feel so well familiar with it. We also baked gingerbread people at school and decorated them this term. Guess who was the guiding gingerbread guru then? ;)

Loving and leaving you with the freshly baked gingerbreads. But before I go I'd like to wish you all

a very Merry Christmas with all the blessings coming from the little Baby Jesus born in Betlehem and lots of joy and delight in celebrating this wonderful time of year .

Gingerbread man Christmas Cards

The Gingerbread man theme has grown on me a lot recently. We did the gingerbread man story with kids at work/ school a month ago. We also baked some yummy gingerbread people and decorated them too! I felt so inspired! So as a thematic continuation I promised my colleagues that this year my Christmas cards for them will be all about the gingerbread man theme. The Noolibird gingerbread man stamps seem to be just prefect for this challenge - they are yummy, quirky and whimsical :)

Initially my intention was to have Christmas 2013 all about the gingerbread theme but... having such lovely stamps at home I just couldn't wait till the end of 2013! So I've made a few the cards with them.

I started off with the red and white series of cards.

Because the stamps are so decorative, in most cases only card, stamps, ink, glue and scissors were enough to create a whole card. Sometimes I added some extras like sparkly sequins, glitter glue or glossy accents. I absolutely love the ribbon stamp - it's so functional and versatile, you can create different borders - narrow or wider ones, whichever takes your fancy, also in various colours to adjust it to your theme.

Some small cards followed the bigger ones. I had a few remaining patterned card blanks from last year card making kits and thought it would be good to use them now.

Individually:

It's not like me not to try other colour combinations. Hey, why not? Let's go gingerbread and blue this time!

4 cards with machine stitching and blue/turquoise background papers. I like the way the gingerbread brown combines with the blues.

Guess what, now I can't decide if I like red 'n' white ones or the brown-blue ones more :) but I know one thing for sure - I'm not done with the gingerbread man yet! ;P

Joining up the Hand-made Monday fun tonight! Do pop in and see other lovely creations :)