Gingerbread Houses 2012
Thank you for all the sweet wishes for TheSecondChild’s speedy recovery from his cat bite. He’s gone home now and all seems to be back to normal — or so he tells me. It was certainly a memorable Christmas for us — I’ll always remember it for the chaos. I was even so distracted that I forgot the dinner rolls for Christmas dinner. The shame! We got a beautiful snow on the 26th — and to prove that bad luck comes in threes, SweetiePie capped off our string by having a little fenderbender in the storm. All these pesky little inconveniences — but everyone is fine, so we really can’t complain!
How is your between week going? Are you finding any time to relax? This is one of my favorite weeks of the year — we have snow, no work, and I even had time to go take a fun little knitting class — more about that later. In the meantime, I’ve made it through pictures of our 2012 Gingerbread competition.
Team 5: TheSecondChild, CuteNiece2, and BestFriendofFirstandSecondChild. I’m not sure what was going on with this team, but I can say that we had to censor part of their house. Too political for our happy little blog here. As you can see, the topic involved taxes — very timely for the fiscal cliff mayhem going on in Washington now. They did have some very cute touches — unfortunately, you don’t get to see them all LOL!
Team 4: TheFirstChild and TheManoftheHouse. What is it with these men? These guys almost had to be censored too. They decided to tease the aforementioned BestFriend about a blurry picture that was taken of him dancing with a girl a few weeks ago. They blew up the picture and recreated the bar — changing the bar name from 8 Seconds Saloon to 8 Sexonds. Naughty Naughty. They did have some fun touches though — a disco ball hanging from the ceiling, a bucking bronco in the corner, a raised “wood” (ahem, shredded wheat) dance floor, and horses hitched outside.
Team 3: MyDadLovesMeBestSister, CuteNiece1 and BigDaddy. MyDadLovesMeBestSister is always very creative with her candy. They started out by creating a nativity scene with a manger and horses in the center of the house. Then, something happened and they changed their plan. Maybe making a statement not to worry about their house? They created the Don’t Worry Be Happy House. I love the sprinkles on their roof, the dog with his pile of dog bones, and their cute little people with the wild, colorful hair!
After the first round of voting, there was a tie for the Team1 and Team 2 houses.
Team2: CrazyBIL, CuteNephew, and CuteNephew’sGirl. CrazyBIL always decides to create alternate shapes with his houses and he ends up carving up the gingerbread pieces. They created a prison this time. Where did that come from LOL??? Maybe, everyone is getting tired of trying to think up new themes??? Anyway, they were very clever with the details. Note the spaghetti window bars and rails for the fences. And orange jumpsuits for the prisoners. They even had an escaped prisoner who ended up in a pool of blood. Very fun!
Team1: SweetiePie and Me. In honor of our trip to the UK this past summer, it seemed only fitting that we would make a UK house, don’t you think? We briefly thought about crumbling a bunch of gingerbread to make a mountain with exhausted climbers in the snow on the top. But then, we decided to go more decorative instead. That’s Big Ben in case you can’t tell, LOL. We tried to make The Eye out of pretzels, but it wouldn’t hold, so I piped some frosting on a cookie sheet and baked it at 200 degrees for 10 or 15 minutes. I was quite surprised when it worked. Anyway, SweetiePie very cleverly created the rows of bobbies and a double decker bus. Then she created a river and we made a mini London bridge.
Can you guess which house won in the run-off? It was Big Ben — Yay! I’m starting to think people vote for my houses as a reward for all the time I spend baking the gingerbread parts before Christmas. Either way, it’s very nice of them!
So, that’s it for another year. Thanks for your visit — I hope you’re ready for New Year’s and that you’re having some fun this week!
XOXO,
Anna
