“One morning, my wife woke up and said: Our house would look great as a gingerbread house,” says Lake Highlands resident Ken Timeon.

That was 10 years ago.

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Little did he know that he’d wind up spending thousands of hours in his craft shop so that hundreds of neighborhood families could troop to his very own “Gingerbread House” every year.

Or that colossal wooden candies would be draped from the house, and giant candy canes would dangle from a sturdy tree in the front yard and a busy cargo train touting a blinking red light would hurdle through the yard.

Or that life-size, sparkling gold reindeer would leap through the air, a 6-foot elf would perch in a tree, wooden toys would be strewn about the yard, and Christmas lights would twinkle everywhere.

“It’s like a little dreamland,” wife Bette Timeon says.

Hand-crafted holidays are growing in popularity these days. This holiday season, we turned up three very different approaches to seasonal crafting.

First, there’s the Timeons, who use their crafting skill to spread holiday spirit throughout our neighborhood.

Then, there’s Kristina’s Collections, a budding clothing line hand-stitched by a neighborhood entrepreneur.

Finally, there’s a group of neighborhood crafters who provide year-round support to a neighborhood service organization, with profits from their craft sales benefiting the needy.

Different seasonal paths, to be sure, but these people share a common bond – they love to craft, and they love to see our response to their work.

Home Is Where The Art Is 

Each holiday season, the Timeons’ house in the 9100 block of Arborside Drive is transformed.

For three days this year, Dec. 21-23, the house is likely to cause a traffic jam of tour buses, limousines and site-seeing families driving by to revel in the home’s festivities.

Some neighbors visit the house three times daily during the Christmas season – even when Santa isn’t there – because their kids want to run loose in the playland, Ken Timeon says.

Several families even have their annual holiday portrait taken in front of the home, he says.

The couple launched the project in 1986, several years after moving to Lake Highlands from Des Moines, Iowa.

Ken says woodwork is his passion: He loves the feeling of sawdust on his hands.

“I guess it’s in the blood. I don’t make anything from a pattern, I just conceptualize and do it,” says Ken, whose grandfather and great-grandfather were furniture and cabinet makers.

The idea originated one day, Bette says, when she looked up and realized her home’s roof line was perfect for a Gingerbread House.

She ran the idea by her husband, who initially was skeptical.

“You can’t run paper sideways on a house,” he told her.

So Bette says she built a small, wooden, model house to demonstrate what she had in mind and began winning Ken over.

Each year, assembling the Gingerbread House – they usually begin the day after Thanksgiving – takes Ken and his sons three 10-hour days.

“It’s quite a production,” says Katharine Deem, who lives a house down from the Timeons. “No one goes to the extent they do.”

Surprisingly, the Timeons fit all of the decorations in their garage, Bette says.

The home has been highlighted on Channel 5 and Channel 8, and it’s listed annually in Dallas Morning News’ list of holiday sites.

After the display’s first several years, the couple decided to invite Santa to the Gingerbread House. When Santa asks what they want for Christmas, Ken says, the mall-goer kids say: “I’ve already told you once.”

In appreciation for the Timeons’ efforts each year, neighbors and friends thank Santa with golf balls, baskets with chips and dip inside them, mugs filled with steaming hot chocolate, cookies, fudge and stacks of letters every year.

The Timeons, who married in 1980 and have five children, say they spend most of their holiday money giving something to the neighborhood rather than buying expensive gifts for family members, Bette says.

“This is what we really get into, as far as making the holidays,” Ken says.

“It’s a part of the holidays. It’s giving something back.”

From Headbands To Playclothes

Kathy Stroud’s latest business began when daughter Kristina was a tiny, hairless baby.

“I got tired of explaining to people that she wasn’t a boy, she was a girl,” laughs Kathy. “I couldn’t find anything to put on her head.”

Feminine, colorful headbands were the key to abolishing the gender dilemma, Kathy decided, and she took it upon herself to make them.

“I had never sewn a stitch in my life,” says Kathy, a Lake Highlands resident for the past 10 years.

Since that first headband, Kathy has sewn more than her share of stitches through Kristina’s Collections, a craft and holiday clothing business she founded.

“We’re one of those seasonal families. People come over and can tell what season it is by what we’re wearing,” Kathy says.

She makes approximately $1,000 a year from the business, but Kathy says she could be making more if she had the time to do more than one fashion show a year.

“It’s nothing I can live on,” Kathy says.

Kathy sells headbands, holiday dresses, holiday skirts and vests, and dress-up boxes filled with costumes for girls and boys.

Kristina’s Collections also handles custom orders and sells children’s overcoats and capes with matching hats. Kathy says she’s even thinking about creating a catalog.

Her dresses are simple, and their simplicity makes them appealing, Kathy says.

The 100 percent cotton holiday dresses fit the basic sun-dress style and are comfortable playclothes for girls, Kathy says.

Most of the material Kathy uses comes from South Carolina because her mother, who lives there, turns up fabric unavailable in Dallas, Kathy says.

“You look at a lot of kids’ jumpers, and you’ll spend $50-$60 for one outfit to wear once,” says Kathy, whose dresses cost $18-$20.

Her holiday vest and skirt sets are reversible, with a different holiday decoration on each side.

Kathy also creates accessories, matching most outfits she sews.

“I’ve probably created a monster. When Kristina is 15 or 16, she’s going to want to buy accessories to go with everything,” Kathy says.

Kathy says she tries to keep up with demand by making one or two dresses nightly during the holiday season.

Kathy says she surprised herself by making money from her sewing, and she has a few tips for other prospective entrepreneurs.

“You need to make sure that you take your product and charge according to how much time you put into making the product,” Kathy says.

She says she also makes every dress as if she’s going to wear the dress herself.

Kathy says she makes two to three versions of each design “so everyone doesn’t walk around town in the same outfit.”

Her business constantly changes as her 5-year-old daughter grows.

“As she gets older, Kristina Collections grows up, too.”

Crafting For A Higher Purpose

The White Rock Center of Hope is a sympathetic shoulder for the needy, thanks in large part to a group of neighborhood residents who donate crafts to the organization.

About a dozen Lake Highlands residents join 70 other Dallas crafters in selling their creations year-round to raise money for the Center, which feeds and pays rent and utilities for the poor.

Lake Highlands resident Rita Boyer is the Center’s craft chairperson and helps organize the Center’s annual holiday craft bazaar in October.

Last year’s three-day bazaar raised $14,000 selling crafts, Boyer says.

The White Rock Center of Hope was founded in 1988. Forty-nine area churches contribute to the organization in various ways.

Yet it’s the year-round craft sales, and the annual crafts bazaar, that raise one of the largest chunks of money for the center, Boyer says.

The crafts include small Christmas trees, angels of all shapes and sizes, decorated toilet plungers for every occasion, reindeer, ornaments, crocheted blankets, photo albums and squirrel feeders.

One of the center’s most popular items are decorated red building bricks, which are detailed with paint and doodads and end up beyond recognition for even the most avid brick-builder.

Craft prices range from $5-$45 with an average craft price of $20.

Boyer became involved with the organization through her church, Northminster Presbyterian in Lake Highlands, three years ago.

“It’s a lot of fun and a lot of work,” says Boyer, who has lived in Lake Highlands for the past 26 years.

“I’m constantly trying to keep up with orders,” Boyer says.

Boyer, who has two daughters and four grandchildren, says she spends 15-20 hours weekly running the Center’s crafts program.

And perhaps it should be no surprise what time of the year is Boyer’s favorite.

“It would have to be Christmas,” she says.