I finally finished the Mushroom House, I'm not as pleased with it as I thought I would be.  I love snow and Christmas, but trying to get the paper mache and paper clay to look like snow was tougher than I thought.  I had fun this weekend working on finishing the electrical and the interior, I couldn't get a good picture of the bedroom on the second floor thought.  I hope some of you like the look of my first attempt at making a snow covered home with paper clay and paper mache.  I probabley wont do another snow covered home until i can perfect how i do it.  I was a little disapointed because i added to much snow and it covered up all of my grass roof and the red mushroom moss on the roofs.  At least i am learning as i go.  I hopefully will start working on a new home in probably a month or so, I'm not sure.  My new kitchen cabinets were just delivered so we can start remodeling our kitchen.  I'm a little freaked out since we have to stain them or paint them, and I want a professional look, and after six attempts with painting and staining 6 sample doors i have no idea what we should do.  So for now the garage is full of new cabinets that i dont know what to do with.  We were trying to bring the price of cabinets from $13,000 for our kitchen remodel that were completed finished, to what we bought that are beautiful but unfinished but at a cheap cost of only $2,000,  I think its a cool goal to try and remodel for this cheap, hopefully we can make it look expensive when we are done.  I will post pictures of the steps we complete in remodeling our kitchen and we complete it in the next month, until i start working on a new house to show you all.  Have a wonderful month.  Stan

I just wanted to post a sneek peek on the progress that I made this weekend on the Winter Gnome House.  I lounged around the house this weekend, since I have a horrible head cold and cough, so lots of up and down time working on the new house in between cold medicine and naps. 

 Today I made alot of progress, I cooked for most of the day in which I made 3 banana cream  pies, 2 very large vegetarian lasagnas-at least 20pds apiece.  I am the only male in an office of about 13 women, and I enjoy feeding them, so 1 of the pans of lasagna is for the ladies at work for lunch ( I decided to experiment for one of the ladies who is vegetarian and when I cook she never gets to eat any of it, so hopefully she'll enjoy it).  Everyone at home loved the lasagna until they were about half way done eating and I asked if they liked the flavor of the meat in the lasagna, which they loved, until I let them know it was Fake, and it was all veggies processed to look like meat, and tofu.  Then they were upset I told them, and they didnt like it as much-crazy people. 

So while I was cooking all day, I was able to complete alot of work on the house.  I think I spent all last night making up papermache and using paperclay and applying to the house, it will probably take a week to dry completely.  I spent about 4 hours this morning just painting the paperclay white for snow, I still need to glue the Snow Flakes on top of all the snow, but I'm tired and will do it next weekend.  I found a base for the house at the thrift store, which was a TV tray which I turned upside down and glued the house to it.  The house was pretty large, so it took 7 stores to find a big enough item to place the house on.

I'm not sure if I will do more Winter Houses or not, I really like the look, and for my first attempt at a winter scene, it was pretty fun.  But it doubled the cost since it took alot of paperclay to create all the snow on the home, and it also doubled the work time.  Hopefully next weekend I will be able to finish the exterior and install the lights and the decor. 

I hope everyone has a Wonderful Week!  Stan