Adventures with Gingerbread

Well, it is now officially less than three days until Christmas Eve and less than four days until Christmas Day. We're here...ready or not! I, personally, can't wait! I've got a pile of presents under the tree to shake; all my gifts have been bought; now I just have the anticipation!

Before Christmas is finally here, though, I have several fun activities planned for this weekend that I am very excited about it! I have not one, but...count them!...two activities planned with groups of girlfriends. Tonight, a group of six of us are going out for dinner and margaritas; tomorrow, my very best friend (we've known each other since we were both 14!) and another great friend from high school are going out to lunch. In the midst of these fun times, I also have.... my baking to do, some movies to watch (watching "It's a Wonderful Life" is a tradition), and two mini albums to finish working on. It's all good!!

And now...I need to give you the story behind my post title for this evening.

Believe it or not, we have NEVER done a gingerbread house in our family. It's something I've wanted to do every year, but have never found the time for it. This year, I said, was the year! And last night was the night. We dug out the gingerbread kit, divided up all the candies, put frosting into a decorating bag, and then let the girls go hog wild!

We started out slow...

Then Delaney and Sydney began decorating in earnest (McKenna did two rows of gumdrops and had just about had her fill! lol)...

At the end of the decorating session--even after the two sides of the roof collapsed a couple of times, sprinkles erupted all over the floor, and the girls fought over the last peppermint discs--we were all covered with frosting, but very pleased with our end-result...


But then the question arose...

Do we spend all this time on a gingerbread house, only to let it sit on a table and be admired by passers-by? Is there some sort of Gingerbread Rule, by which some great gingerbread governing body says that we can only sit and look at all that yummy frosting and candy?

We promptly decided that we had pictures of our creation, after all...there was no real reason to keep the house around. We have plenty of other, non-edible decorations in the house already. So...

we took it apart and ate it. And, let me just tell you, a gingerbread house tastes as good as it looks!

(And now, one other little point before I leave you for the weekend... Please say a prayer for my computer! I'm sitting here on Gary's computer to do this post. This afternoon, my laptop died and it absolutely will not come back up again. Gary's gonna see if he can figure out the problem, but I'm very worried that I've lost everything on it. It's got a ton of pictures, articles, writing projects...just a whole lot of stuff that just about makes me cry to think about losing. So, please cross your fingers that Gary can work his computer magic and make it work again!)

I hope all of you have a WONDERFUL weekend-before-Christmas!! I will pop back in here Monday, when it will be CHRISTMAS EVE!!

(And remember to leave comments. I will draw a name from all the comments...from yesterday's post through Tuesday night...and give a RAK to someone!)