Sunday, December 12, 2010

Advent 2010 #3



The Peters' Gingerbread House 2010
No deep thoughts here... A friend's gingerbread house party is a tradition we have enjoyed since the kids were young. Even though none of our kids came home to join in the festivities this year, we still and made a gingerbread house. Marsh and I collaborated on one house. She took care of decorating the house proper while I focused on the yard.  A new insight this year was that you should complete the decorations on house before putting up the fence. Every gingerbread house needs a fence but the fencing contractor was not happy when asked to remove part of the fence to put on the house decorations. In the end the Christmas festivities were saved from disaster. Only one cross-beam (pretzel) was removed and a special tool was invented to place the decorations behind the fence posts.


No Chimney this year - going green in gingerbread land.

Note Side Building (Dog house or ???) and nice walkway

Note the wise selection of candy for the wall and roof  (Wrapped candies can be eaten!)
Taking your time in building and plenty of breaks to see other construction techniques is the proper approach. As each new family arrives throughout the afternoon, more dishes arrive that it is only proper to sample. I was content with hot cider and a couple of variations on meatballs augmented by chips and dip. But then the clam chowder came. It demanded a second helping. But, as always, the main event was not the houses or the holiday foods but the great conversation with old friends and a few new ones.


Note the lovely fence (Pretzels and small Gingerbread men probably won't get eaten.)

Hershey's Kisses for me, Rolos for Marsh. No one actually eats the little hard candies that have the little Christmas trees on them, do they?

Continuing the tour - Candy Cane Door - Bet you wish you had one.

Note the fire pit and walk ways in the front yard - oooo - 
So much for going green

And a first for all the years and hundreds of houses made at this party - a fire pit with Gingerbread kids roasting marshmallows. The correct way of course, letting them flame up.
With a better camera you could see the tremendous skill required to create the blazing fire ... Well, perhaps not much skill, but definitely a tremendously random mind to conceive of it.

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