Since I was a little girl, I have always been fascinated by Gingerbread Houses. I mean, how cute can you get? I would live in one as long as it's covered in chocolate kisses so could I walk out my door, snap one off and pop it in my mouth. When I was 16, I got a job at a outdoor shopping center called Capital Court; at the lunch counter at Woolworth's. I know some of you reading this aren't old enough to remember or may not even know that yes, we used to have 'open' shopping centers in Milwaukee. I worked there for at least two years and I LOVED when Christmas would arrive. They would put up and decorate this HUGE Christmas tree in the middle of the shopping center with what else, but a Gingerbread House next to it! It was amazing with it's moving parts and all the lights and it even played music! It was big enough so kids could go in, visit Santa, watch the gingerbread cookies being made and come out with a free sample. What a way to celebrate Christmas!! Well, Capital Court is no longer there and I do believe that the Gingerbread House was donated somewhere so it's nice to know it lived on.
This year I decided that John and Isabelle needed to learn how to decorate a gingerbread house of their own. So, off to Michaels we went and found this fun and easy kit. Fully assembled. All we had to do was frost and decorate with the candy that was included. Sounds easy, hey? As with a lot of things it DID start out easy. We whipped up the frosting and I frosted the roof and let the kids add some candies. Well, when I went to frost the sides, the frosting was like cement and it was not spreading.....
So, Becky and I decided to add some water and then it got too soupy. She didn't have any powdered sugar in her cupboard (Becky doesn't bake much) so we added flour to thicken it up which didn't quite work as planned. Then it went from bad to worse! Included in the kit was this decorating tube to put the frosting in so you could draw on the windows and door....yeah, right. Maybe that works if your frosting is the right consistency but when it is too runny, that is exactly what your windows and door do when you draw them on the house....they RUN! And then as she was squeezing it, the side of the decorating bag split and all the frosting was oosing out. Now, while this frosting fiasco was going on, I suppose you might be wondering about John and Isabelle and how they were holding out. As you can see by the above photo, they sat patiently with their little bowls of candy waiting to see if the frosting was going to win or Mommy and Grandma. Luckily, John saved the day by being a clutz.........
He accidentally tipped over his bowl of round candies which started rolling and escaping all over the place. Total chaos broke lose trying to stop them from rolling off the table, especially to one side since the floor must be just that little bit lopsided. But, John had that covered....in two seconds flat, he flew across the top of the table to try and block them from falling off the table. Soon, Isabelle joined him on that end of the table to help out. There was screaming, grabbing and ...... a lot of laughing!! We managed to round up most of the candy although I think Maggie, the dog, got her fill from those that made it to the floor. After that, I just slapped the rest of the frosting (runny or not) on the house, told the kids to put the candies anywhere they wanted and.......
TA-DA!!
Later I asked John what his favorite thing was about building the Gingerbread House and he smiled and said "Building it with you Grandma". I think that about sums it up and mission accomplished.
(I especially like the gumdrops and peppermint laying in the melted snow, don't you?)
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