Wednesday, December 2, 2009

New Home Construction

Our blank canvas. Through a stroke of fortune this year we bought the gingerbread house kit at Costco and I didn't notice until after checkout that the house was preassembled. Score! So the kids start out with a blank canvas, a muffin tin full of candy and a dream.

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This year their dream looked like this.

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First I had to appropriately bribe the baby in order to keep her out of the muffin tin of teeny little bead candies. She was performing quality control on the gingerbread.

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Then I quickly hit the house with the royal icing. Yes that job was mine, not the kids, can't you tell? Obviously my OCD tendencies go out the window with the gingerbread house and over the years I've learned to let go more and more. My objective is to get on as much icing as quickly as I can. Luckily goopy icing looks like icicles.

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What I found interesting is being a bit older, the boys were actually trying to replicate the house on the side of the box. Yes, they were trying to get all the details just so. I thought that was darling.

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This is what happens when you leave a frosted tree within her reach. It was only a moment but alas, she went to town with the royal icing.

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Midway through the project the boys decided this was to be a gingerbread fire station and what station is complete without a pole?

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I have to say I'm a bit surprised at how much candy actually ended up on the house. In previous years the poor forlorn gingerbread house would have a smattering of candies and the kids would have ingested the balance.

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After cleaning her off, the baby went to do what she does any free moment. Mess around with my laptop. If you read any gibberish I've posted somewhere online, it's likely she posted it. She actually begins to quickly tap on the keyboard pretending she's typing.

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4 comments:

Margaret said...

we have that gingerbread house! I'm planning on doing it with the kids on Sat. Did you construct it before hand (I think it said give it 2-3 hours to dry) and then decorate it?

MommaMari said...

Margaret thankfully this one came preassembled so all we had to do was decorate but in the past we've made the kits you have to assemble and the kids have no patience for waiting on the house to "set". Still, I've found that with enough frosting, there is only minor slipping around so we move straight onto the decorating fun part.

Anonymous said...

AWWW...they are growing so fast! I can't wait to come for another visit!
Love,
R.

MommaMari said...

Hey! It's great to see you on here. I found the pictures from last year's gingerbread house session where you were helping the boys. Hope everything is going well.