Gingerbread Houses

For a little while now, I've been helping the kids make gingerbread houses each year. I always make and build the house from scratch, and then they decorate. They're nothing fancy, but maybe as the girls get older, they'll choose to do something more elaborate.

Hundreds of years ago, Nuremburg, Germany became the "gingerbread capital" of the world. Master bakers, called Lebkuchler, would create and sell Lebkuchen. It was in Germany that these gingerbread treats began to be used to build houses. When German immigrants settled in America, they brought the gingerbread house tradition with them and seeing as how all things German remind me of the areas of Texas I absolutely adore, my Christmas in Montana is NOT the year to skip the gingerbread houses, even if having a newborn around makes it a little more difficult.

So, Saturday night, I set out to make the houses.

Big fat failure. I couldn't find my regular building gingerbread recipe, so I tried one I found online. Based on reviews, I guess it was baker error that messed it up, but really, I'm no amateur baker, so at the very least, this is no recipe for beginners. I got a mess that I could tell from picking it up would just have me cussing within the hour if I tried rolling it out. Way too cookie-like for a building gingerbread recipe. I was frustrated and hunted more for my regular recipe.

And then I came to my senses. The kids don't care if it's a gingerbread house or not, they just want to stick candy all over something. So I built my very first set of graham cracker houses. My plan was to use 6 whole crackers for each house. I started out by using one cracker as a guide and cutting gables on another cracker I used a steak knife (any serrated blade will do) and a gentle sawing motion (don't press down) to do the cutting. Then I stacked that piece on another cracker to get two matching gable pieces I realized later I made a mistake here...I should have made that line go all the way down to the half way point on the cracker so it would match up with the side of the house. Since I didn't do that, I ended up piecing together a roof.

For my cement, I used a basic royal icing recipe: 2 egg whites, 3 cups powdered sugar, 1/4tsp cream of tarter. Normally I use meringue powder instead of egg whites, but I was out. Since I'm not doing anything fancy, I just put the icing in a sandwich bag and cut the corner off to pipe it on.

I assembled the houses and let them dry overnight.

Sunday afternoon, I laid out various candies and let the girls go to town decorating their houses.



Gingerbread...er...graham cracker success!

Let It Snow...

When we first got back to Montana, there was a lot of snow on the ground, but everyone told us that was really unusual for this time of year. Sure enough, it eventually all melted. This morning there was NO snow on the ground. I was really starting to get a little ticked. There wasn't any snow on the ground and there wasn't any snow in the forecast and I just feel like if it's going to be EIGHT stinkin' degrees at night on a regular basis, my kids should at least get a white Christmas.

But if there's one thing I should've figured out by now, it's that the forecast here is never right. The forecast will change drastically throughout the day and still manage to be off. They predicted snow yesterday, but said there would be little to no new accumulation. I'd say there were a good 4 inches of snow piled up out there during the day and it was still snowing hard when we went to bed. The forecast (which, of course, may or may not be accurate) is also calling for another 2-4 inches of accumulation tonight. I'm hoping that the chance of rain and above freezing temperatures predicted for later in the week don't pan out. I'd really like to spend Christmas day building a snowman and sledding.

Just in case it doesn't hang around though, we took the girls out to play after lunch yesterday. This was about an hour or two after the snow started.

And by the time we went to bed, all this had piled up I realize it's not all that much in the big scheme of things, but we're Texans...we're only used to seeing that much of the white fluffy stuff about once every 10 years.

Beware of Bears

I have this theory. Okay, it's not really my theory. It's something I heard from someone else years ago (when I was working at WIC, I think, but I'm honestly not sure). But the theory makes sense to me.

Babies don't want to be put down because they're afraid a bear might eat them.

Hear me out.

It's not at all advantageous for babies to be content with being left alone. In certain times and certain parts of the world, the babies left alone could very well be snatched by predators. MY baby has no clue that she's safe in our house. She just has a hard-wired instinct that being alone is very much NOT okay. And that's not a ridiculous idea for her to have. I would never leave her alone in the woods in bear country, because, you know, a bear really might eat her. To go along with this theory, is the other idea that it is distressing to hear a baby cry. Literally, on a physical level, it raises the stress your body experiences. This too, makes perfect sense. A baby's cry is SUPPOSED to be stressful. As parents, we're SUPPOSED to want it to stop (in some way that also preserves the baby, of course). So yes, I carry Secora around A LOT. Yes, I nurse her "on demand" (I think "on cue" is a more accurate term) and provide non-nutritive sucking after she eats. Yes, I let her sleep next to me (with appropriate safety precautions) as millions of babies all over the world have done for thousands of years. And no, she's not spoiled. Babies don't spoil, food does. Babies don't have any wants that are not also needs. They aren't crying for ice cream or a ride on the ferris wheel. They aren't screaming in the store for the latest new toy. They are asking for food, a clean bottom and safety in the only way they know how. These are all needs that deserve to be met.

It only takes about a year for them to realize that, in fact, they will NOT be eaten by a bear if they are in a different room at night. And a year is an exceedingly short time in this very sweet season of life.

So for now, I'll protect Secora from the bears.
After all, just this week, Sierra got wide-eyed in the meat section of the local grocery store and quietly asked, "Are those baby back ribs REALLY made from babies?!?" So maybe she's right about needing constant protection.

Ornaments

I had the girls make their own ornaments this week. First, I glued popsicle sticks together and let them decorate them
And of course we had to get out paint, because everything is better with paint
When they were done and dry, I printed a picture of each girl and glued them to the frame. Voila! Instant Christmas ornament (not sure why the pictures look washed out, they're not like that in real life)