Reading is Sweet (in a gingerbread house)

Hi friends!

As I promised, I snapped a few photos today of our cozy reading spots for the winter holidays. Here's what we have going.

Do you remember our reading tent? It goes with our normal camping theme for the year, and it's been a big hit!

I added a large cardboard box, cut out so that it formed a large, inverted "V" across the top of the tent, draped brown butcher paper over the "V," and added frosting stripes with white paint.

Can you see the box on top, giving the roof its shape? I used the huge binder clips to attach the box to the tent. I painted the frosting on the house after school, so it could dry before the next morning's classes.

After the frosting was painted on, I glued on colorful circles to look like candy.

It's no architectural masterpiece, but it's a fun reading spot! (The binder clips have come undone during the course of the day, and the "peppermint" over the entry way seems to be at half mast. But gravity tends to keep the roof and paper walls in place all day.)

Another cozy little space in our library is our "fireplace" area. It looks like this.

We emptied one column of bookshelves and put the books on a library cart nearby. We covered the shelves with brick paper, cut out a rectangle and lined it with black butcher paper. Inserted into the black space is a lid from a printer  paper case, covered in black, with tissue paper and twinkle lights inside. You can't really tell from this photo that the fireplace twinkles with lights. (Do you see our fox mascot perched under our little tree?)

The key to the realism of the fireplace is the brick paper. Last year I tried the fireplace look by drawing bricks on paper. Not. Even. Close. This is not the corrugated paper, just the roll of 48 inch tall brick patterned paper from the teacher supply store. I think it only cost three or four dollars, and it will last through several winters.

I hope you are having fun in YOUR library this holiday season!