Are you ready for it?
Five dollars! So I snapped it up and brought it home, and the girls could hardly contain their excitement to put the thing together.
As it turns out, it was a multi-step process. The first night, we put the pieces together with icing, but had to let it dry at least 3 hours before decorating. To throw them a bone, I let the girls decorate the "guys," and used the rest of the first batch of icing to make snowbanks along the edges of the house. Clio and Eleri both approached this task with the philosophy that no part of a gingerbread person should remain undecorated, and the cookies ended up so top heavy, I had to reinforce their feet with gumdrop piles to keep them upright. Nonetheless, some happy, proud campers were on hand.
Tonight we got to finish decorating the house. Parental error number one: leaving the gingerbread house and all the fixins on the table with the children while I mixed up the second (of three) batch of icing. By the time I got to the table 4 minutes later, Eleri had eaten half of the snowdrifts on her side of the house, save the one I dug out of her mouth and washed down the sink. (A word of warning: if you ever buy one of these kits, do NOT read the nutritional value information on the box. I have literally never seen such a long list of chemicals on a "food" product.) There was much continued sneaking of candy, then a potty accident diminished our progress. After bath, the girls discovered that dried icing is much less amenable to candy decoration than wet icing, but Eleri showed little remorse for the interruption. They each got their hands on one of the icing bags, and all hell broke loose.
Still, I like the sort of Jeckyl and Hyde results. Clio's half:
Eleri's half:
I especially like the single bead in one window, which says to me that she did consider the windows a design element, but this is all she had for them.
I achieved balance myself by taking some control freaky measures on the icicles, the path to the house, and the green garland along the eaves, allowing the girls to wreak havoc pretty much everywhere else.
So, if we include this is a Christmas activity, our holiday was officially almost seven weeks long, beginning with a tree trimming party on December 5th, followed by Duggan Christmas on December 19, Wood Christmas on December 25, and Peterson Christmas January 1. And nary a photo or blog post in sight: shame on me. I think I'll just ignore that thing about how blogs should record the day to day and go ahead with an onslaught of holiday posts, thereby extending our celebrations just a little bit further.
Merry Christmas!
1 comment:
I also have several thousand posts that have not made it to posting. Unlike you, however, they don't just date back to the beginning of December but all the way to July. Oh the shame.
P.S. Good for you for letting the girls wreak havoc. That's so much more fun than trying to control it.
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