Largest Gingerbread City in Bergen, Norway

In my previous post on gingerbread houses, I mentioned about the largest gingerbread city in Bergen, Norway. Assa, from Nissas Juleblogg sent me this link The-Worlds-largest-Ginger-snap-City. When I went to the website and saw the picture of the gingerbread city, which is free for children under the age of 12 to make their own house with the help of their parents, I was amazed in how much work must have gone into making this large miniature city! It's so beautiful. I would enjoy seeing this!  I went looking for images of it and found these on Google. Here are a few:

I also found a video on You Tube:



Hope you enjoyed watching. Have a great week!

Gingerbread Houses

This is one of 26 beautiful Gingerbread Houses you can view in a photo gallery at Martha Stewart's Website. I can't imagine the time that goes into making one! Very creative!

The harder German-style Gingerbread is often used to build gingerbread houses similar to the "witch's house" encountered by Hansel and Gretel. These houses, covered with a variety of candies and icing, are popular Christmas decorations, often built by children with the help of their parents.
Since 1991, the people of Bergen, Norway, have built a city of gingerbread houses each year before Christmas. Named Pepperkakebyen (Norwegian for "gingerbread city"), it is claimed to be the world's largest such city. It's free for every child under the age of 12 to make their own house with the help of their parents. In 2009, the people of Bergen were shocked when the gingerbread city was destroyed in an act of vandalism.
Another type of model-making with gingerbread uses a boiled dough that can be molded like clay to form inedible statuettes or other decorations. Medieval bakers used carved boards to create elaborate designs.
A significant form of popular art in Europe, major centers of gingerbread mold carvings included Lyon, Nürnberg, Pest, Prague, Pardubice, Pulsnitz, Ulm, and Toruń. Gingerbread molds often displayed the "news", showing carved portraits of new kings, emperors, and queens, for example. Substantial mold collections are held at the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń, Poland and the Bread Museum in Ulm, Germany.

http://www.bhg.com,  Victorian Gingerbread House

http://www.bhg.com, Noah's Gingerbread Ark

You can read more about the different varieties and the history of gingerbread at Wikipedia. You can also see a video on building a gingerbread house HERE. Read about the largest gingerbread city in Bergen, Norway HERE.

Christmas Kitchen

We are doing a kitchen remodel in a couple of weeks, so I got to thinking about decorating the kitchen for the holidays.  For the Christmas obsessed (like me), each room of the house gets decorated.  Not just the living room with the tree.  Each room has a Santa or some holiday pizzazz added to it.  What do you do?  Do you like to keep things simple or do you go all out?  Here are some cute Christmas kitchen pictures I found online.

This first one is nice and simple.  It's understated but gives the kitchen a cozy Christmas feel.  I love the greenery in the windows.  It complements the lovely green colour of the cabinetry.  Could you image walking into this kitchen and smelling the wonderful scent of evergreen mixing with all the holiday baking?  This country kitchen is the epitome of simple Christmas living.

This next one is a bit more eclectic.  It's a modern Christmas palette.  I like the monocromatic look of all the silver and blue.  This seems to be a growing trend; moving away from the traditional reds and greens of the holiday. 

This simplistic, yet elegant, display still captures the holiday spirit without feeling too cold.

I hope these ideas help you keep the joys of Christmas in your heart all year long.  Remember, keep it merry and bright!

More on Antique Christmas Stands

I decided to check out more antique christmas tree stands and found a few Google Images. I love to look at the old tree stands. It's just nostalgic! If you missed my very first post on Christmas tree stands you can read about it Here.

This is a vintage 1950's Coloramic Christmas tree stand Snowman lithography, boxed, that sold for $99.00 at Vintage Toys.  It's beautiful!

This beauty was found at Khlmolds. There are several other beautiful cast iron or poured metal tree stands here and ways to use them.

Now I really don't know that this one is an antique, but I just thought it was beautiful! It too is made of cast iron and I found it at  The Christmas Cabin LTD.

Another cast iron tree stand found at Christmas in the Country. There are four pages of vintage Christmas items for sale at this website. http://www.gonecountryantiques.com/

This is an antique one being sold on Ebay for $50.00. Found it Here. Love the poinsettia design.

I think someone brought this one to my attention in my other post on antique Christmas tree stands. I can't say that I like it, but it is rare. The hole for a tree trunk doesn't look very big, so maybe it could have been used for say...one of those aluminum foil Christmas trees to light them up and make them shiny and reflective...  It sold for $20.49 on Ebay.  I looked up the comment on my other post on tree stands and the person who commented and his tree stand that is just like this one...only his looks like it's in much better shape...can be found on Blog Utopia. His was found on Craigslist.

I really love this one!! Vintage 1950's. Found at Flickr. and Google Images.

Christmas Holiday Window Painting by Kim Cooper

Kim Cooper, the world's greatest window artist, demonstrates a holiday snowman character in Las Vegas, NV. at Budget Suites on Thanksgiving Day in "2009." She made this snowman come to life. What a gift to have! She's been painting windows for twenty years and uses Dayglo paints.



Kim will also paint on static window cling and ship directly to you for $49.00.

More Spring Photos

Well, the weather here has been a bit up and down, some lovely sunshine but also some cooler days with a bit of rain. Anyway, I was able to get out and find some alpine flowers to photograph.

The meadows are starting to look wonderful filled with all the flowers and blossom trees.

Needless to say, boardgames haven't been at the top of  my list at the moment. As I write this, the television is on constantly.....why, Prince William is marrying Kate Middleton and Tina is glued to the set.  :)

Radio City Hall's Rockettes-March of the Wooden Soldiers

My husband and I watched this a few years ago and I loved their Christmas show! I was very impressed with the march of the wooden soldiers.

Image from http://www.nj.com


A line of wooden soldiers is shot by a cannon and blown over. They fell like dominoes! What a great performance!

Image from http://www.naplesnews.com/


Thought I would put the video here also just in case you might want to watch it. Have a good one!



The cannon comes in about two minutes into the video.

The Rockettes are a well-known precision dance company performing out of the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, New York City. During the Christmas season, the Rockettes have performed five shows a day, seven days a week, for 75 years. Perhaps their best-known routine is an eye-high leg kick in perfect unison in a chorus line, which they include at the end of every performance.

Image from http://365thingsaustin.com

The Radio City Christmas Spectacular is performed annually at Radio City Music Hall and in numerous other American and Canadian cities by a touring company of Rockettes. It is one of the most-watched live shows in the United States, with over 2 million viewers per year. The Rockettes perform annually at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (since 1957) and the America's Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit. The NBC Rockefeller Center Tree-Lighting Ceremony also traditionally includes a performance by the dance troupe.

Image from http://www.nelsoncountylife.com

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