The Gingerbread Project

On Monday afternoon Jenna and Rachel went to the grocery store, bought a list of ingredients, got in their car, and came to our house. It was project time!!! We were feeling creative, energetic, and in a holiday mood. What was the project you ask....why a full-fledged gingerbread house!! So we pulled out Martha Stewart's instructions and the work began=) Aren't you just excited thinking about it? Little did we know....

The first step was making the gingerbread cookie dough and lots of it! Next we had to chill overnight, but we settled for 30 minutes outside in the 5 degree weather.

Next came the rolling out of the dough....

And since we could not get our printer to cooperate and make us a copy of the templates at 200%, I pulled out my ruler and made up some for us to use.

In order to have the full effect we also wanted to make some trees to add a special touch to what we envisioned as the perfect little house=)

Once all the shapes were cut out they had to bake (and re-bake) and cool once again. This was the first point where we started to wonder if things weren't going exactly according to Martha's perfect plans...

After that was when the fun work began as we decorated several of the shapes before actually putting the house together.

Then we made up a sugar syrup that was supposed to be used to make the windows, as well as serving as the 'glue' to hold the house together. Here I am pouring the syrup, which is supposed to harden very quickly, into the window openings.

Next we started sticking some pieces together...ok, so most of the sticking together was done by Rachel and Jenna and here they are working on the chimney.

We really did still think it would get kinda fun at this point, once we were putting it together, even though the hour was getting late and we were starting to drag....we still were trying to hold on to some hope that this project would be a success.

But as the pieces started to crack, and the windows failed to ever harden, and 'someone' ate one of our pieces, and we kept having to use more and more cans of beans to hold the house together....we got a little weary....and silly.

Jenna, little trooper that she is, did not give in and kept at it, finishing the project when the rest of use were SO done!

By the time she put the finishing touches on it was 9pm...we had started at 2pm.

"Oh Martha, where did we go wrong?!"

And the FINALLY finished product....if someone comments saying it looks cute, I will roll my eyes!

Although we may have gotten a little tired of the process these two little kids enjoyed every bit of it that they could get their hands on. As we were working on the templates we realized we'd have plenty of dough left over to make some cookies and gingerbread men so that is what Alana and Jesse worked on....After chatting with Aunt Helaine, getting their aprons on, and stools in place first, of course! (*These next two pics are just for you, Helaine=)

Alana enjoyed making the cut outs, Jesse enjoyed munching on the dough=)

And I'll close with pictures of my two little cherubs=)

Despite it all it was time spent with friends, and thankfully with friends who stayed chipper despite our trying ordeal=) We finished off the evening watching "It's a Wonderful Life", which was a relaxing way to end the day!