Another tradition, finished for the year.
Our first exchange student, Jens from Germany, introduced us to 1. making a gingerbread house and 2. It doesn't have to look like an winner in the annual contests.
We have been making one every year since. (Once we cheated and bought the forms, and it just didn't have enough candy. Or the right candy. We just can't do a gingerbread house without all the flavors of Jelly Bellys! (except licorice and buttered popcorn)) There is always extra dough, and so I make flagstones and fence posts and boulders -- that is when the dough is tired of being rolled out one more time. I just roll them up and bake them as is.
This first picture shows our state of the art construction methods. This has been refined over the years. It holds it until the glue (powdered sugar and water) is dry enough to hold everything together. Then you start on the yard. One year, my sister (the totally talented and creative) made an igloo out of pillow mints. Another year, a young friend of ours took fat chocolate chips and glued them on his roof flat side out. They were solar panels. Our pastor's oldest son (when in sixth grade) fashioned a guillotine out of graham crackers. The crowning touch was gummi bears separated from their heads, and tiny bits of red licorice nearby.
Our normal yard, however, contains frolicking gummy bears, fences, a woodpile, snow balls, the occasional small branch from the Christmas tree: basically normal stuff.
This year, our exchange student, who we thought was a nice normal girl who doesn't swear, likes to go to church, and doesn't wear clothes with skulls on them, decided to make a spider. Only she didn't have room for 8 legs made of reindeer corn, so she only made six. This meant it was an insect, and needed antennae, and she used what were supposed to be fence posts for this. The finishing touch was a couple of chocolate chips for eyes. The second picture has all the weird stuff on it, with a closeup of the alien in the third picture.
Then they posed with their house. You will notice that, for this picture, they chose to have the normal side showing.
posted by Marion @ 4:31 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home