jaklumen’s Neighborhood

Tackling an American Holiday Tradition

Usually, right around Christmas time, I decide to do some kind of homemade project. I did two this year, but this second one is probably something of a more difficult undertaking. The last time I made a gingerbread house, I used a kit and it came out predictably well. This year, however, I decided to make one completely from scratch. Here's the story.

When I first decided to build a gingerbread house, I knew right away that I didn't want to build a typical gingerbread house. I toyed with the idea of building a gingerbread castle, but the more I looked at other people's castles the more I began to think that such an undertaking might be very, VERY complicated (a word which here means entirely too hard, stressful and frustrating for me). Then, after a while, I got to thinking about the original gingerbread house, featured in the Grimm brothers' verison of Hansel and Gretel and I wondered how easy it would be to make a model of that house. Then, once I had a concept in mind I moved to the next step. Planning.

The planning phase of building any house usually involves a floor-plan and blueprints and my gingerbread house wasn't much different. I bought a foldable foam-core base and a piece of posterboard and began to try to figure out what my house should look like. To be technically acurate, it would need a little room in back with the witch's next meal in it. Anyway, I doodled around until I had a template. Then, I cut it out and taped it together to see if it would fit. Let me tell you, right off, here, if you are following this hoping to get some tips on cookie house building. If you choose to make your own pattern, allow at least 1/4 inch of wiggle room if some of your pieces have to fit together.

Anyway, now that I had my plan and my pattern, I went onto the internet in search of a good, first-rate recipe (which I will not be posting here because I don't know whether it was my fault or the recipes. Either way, I wasn't happy with the way the cookies turned out). Put it together and baked it. That was last night. Silly girl. You know better than to stay up until three in the morning baking cookies. Yeah, I know. So anyway, I think I may have rolled out some of the cookies too much because most of them shrunk a little.

Once I had the cookies ready, I needed icing for assembly glue and candies for decoration. I also needed something edible to make the people out of. Here's a list of the treats that made it onto this house.

Red Hots
Werther's original candies (they make great window panes)
Cakemate green sugar (for grass)
Mini-meltaway mints (the kind they sell right around Christmas time for no reason that I readily understand)
Spice drops
Miniature candy canes
Round starlite mints
Rold Gold Pretzel twists
Ready-made commercial fondant (to be molded into the Witch and 3 kids)

Once again, the icing recipe didn't come out exactly the way I wanted it to, so no recipe here either. The upside, though, is that it did its job and stuck things together properly.

As you can see by the pictures, even though the ingredients were (in my opinionated opinion) substandard, the finished product actually turned out pretty good. My family are certainly looking forward to eating it when the time comes.

Housework report, day 3

I'm sorry I didn't get on and tell you about how the housework went yesterday. I'm afraid I was pretty tired after working the day before. I expect to have another of those kinds of nights, but less strenuous, one hopes.

*********************************LATER*********************************

Pardon the interruption. I just had to spend an hour and a half in clearing my daughter's floor. I still respected much of her privacy. I didn't take things from shelves or her toybox, I just picked everything up off the floor. I was tempted to just rake everything up and put it all into plastic bags, like my dad use to threaten to do to me, but I used restraint.

Regarding yesterday, I did get the refrigerator clean, but I also worked myself into the ground so I didn't get anything else done that day. I also managed to clear the top of my desk, a job that took most of the afternoon. I clonked out right around nine and slept through until noon :-( Anyway, the regular household chores still need doing. If I act fast, I ought to be able to finish them in an hour. Then I still need to clear the floor of my own room. Hopefully, that won't take altogether too much time. I'd like to have it done before I go to bed. My husband, sweetie that he is, has said that he won't allow me to pull another all-nighter, though, because I am grouchy and hard to live with when I'm tired.

On a side note, I had strange dreams during my nap this morning involving my wedding ring and long hallways leading to I don't really remember where.

I'll try to write again tomorrow and let you know how the inspection seemed to go.

Housework report, day 1

Well, you'll all be pleased to know that I finally seem to have gotten my act together and am making progress, slowly but surely, in the area of the housework, though I'll admit I had to hide my lappy from myself in order to do it. I'm nearly done with the laundry, the dishes are mostly done, and my daughter's room looks much better. I anticipate working on the refrigerator tonight after my kids are both in bed and I may make a little headway on clearing my desk before I hit the sheets as well. Following my husband's suggestion to just put things away rather than fill up boxes and then place them hopefully someplace like the contents might somehow put themselves away is working really well.

My daughter has accepted the responsibility of a personal wastebasket, (somewhat unwillingly I'll admit, but still) and I'm pleased to say that placing reminders into my PDA to help her get her chores done is working out very nicely. She actually earned her sticker for completed daily chores today. I was well pleased.

Anyway, back to the subject of housework. I anticipate finishing a number of projects before Thursday morning, when our annual housing inspection takes place. Here's the list.

Clear and organize my desk
Clear the little end table we keep the newspapers in and put the things on it where they belong
Clean the fridge
Clean my room
Clean my kids' room (if necessary).

My biggest hope at the moment is that I'll be able to maintain this cleanliness indefinitely as the best message of love I could give to my family.

There will likely be another entry under this title tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Tuneage!

Trinity
Nov 25, 2009
1 comment

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

PROPAGANDA!!!

Trinity
Nov 25, 2009
1 comment

PROOF OF PROPAGANDA!! READ THIS!

there you have it... the explanation of the bullshit that is.... twilight....
now normally I wouldn't comment about this but i felt it necessary considering how funny this post is.. and since i was brought up mormon.. i can tell you that this is rather disturbing... O.o tho seriously im not that suprised.

Happy Halloween!!!!

Trinity
Oct 31, 2009
1 comment

me in my costume :D ( guess who *wink*) and some halloween decor :D

new photo :)

Trinity
Oct 28, 2009
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not my usual thing but i was bored... and i had to create something at like 1 am O.o
i have been having a creative block so i take my inspiration when it comes... *yawn* *goes back to bed*

Blush

1 comment

Hubby is home!

My husband went in for back surgery this weekend. Nasty business, but I, for one, am glad that it's over with. Now we just have to get through the 6 months of recovery.

(sigh)~~

Any and all prayers and well wishes headed in our direction will be welcomed and made at home.