Gingerbread Houses 2009

The Saturday before Thanksgiving continues to be Gingerbread House day at Grandma & Grandpa's. We invited friends to join us again this year and many were able to join us which made the morning a lot of fun. As I've mentioned before we try and include new families each year and we had lots of new additions, young and old, to our long standing family tradition.

The weather this week didn't help my gingerbread much. It's been unseasonably warm - fantastic for kids playing outside, not fantastic for gingerbread that needs to be brick hard. With Emily's help, we made 5 batches on Monday, and by Friday, after sitting out on the counter all week long, they were still VERY soft. Typically a week on the counter and those puppies are dry and ready to get loaded up with all the candy a kid can cram on the roof. An additional 15 minutes in the oven Friday night and the gingerbread, albeit slightly smoked, was ready.

I still make my gingerbread using Sharon's recipe from 30 some years ago. At some point I might go to the kits, but when you need 5 houses, even buying them on sale ... well I'd just rather put that money toward something else. I got three of them done before the kids got home from school and then Emily made the remaining two before dinner. Now that there are multiple bakers in the house, I can foresee years when the kids each make their own house - the whole blessed concoction.

Thank you to all who were able to join us!! In all we had 14 kids decorating houses and two babies sneaking candy. I think that's a record for this branch of the tradition. We had tables set up everywhere. Rebecca is already planning out next years house, and Sam has requested an additional batch of gingerbread be made so he can build a garage. Yeah, it's a good thing they are getting old enough to bake their own.

Before I share pictures, I will mention, that this year I decorated a house. The kids didn't quite know what to think of that, Mom decorating a house. It raised lots of questions. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I promise to share pictures, but not right now - I need a reason to get you back here.

I need to speak with our photographer ... we don't have a single picture of the kids looking at the camera with their houses. I have pictures of other peoples kids and their houses, but not ours. There's something slightly wrong about that isn't there?




The candy ... this picture doesn't include the candy canes, pretzel sticks, marshmallows, sanding sugars, chocolate Santa's, or ice cream cones ... that all has to go on a separate table.


The assembly ... we had mostly homemade gingerbread this year ... just a handful of kits. The gal assembling houses in this picture works with GR. Her husband had never done a gingerbread house before - today at 30 something, he helped make three.


Emily:


Sam:

PRE Thanksgiving Festivities

Today became a bit crazy busy with kid festivities... I as in charge of playgroup this month and scheduled a little Thanksgiving activity this morning, quickly followed by the school kids Thanksgiving feasts at school. Add to that the special snack Rebecca requested to take to school today for her party today, and it was a late Wednesday night.

In preparing for playgroup I found some really fun activities that I thought I'd share. Only two made it to our playgroup agenda, but the others might be good activities for your kids in the hours leading up to the feast.

Oreo Cookie Turkeys
Pilgrim Hat for Boys ... Pilgrim Hat for Girls
Thanks and Giving Tree family activity - a good FHE activity
Thanksgiving songs for preschoolers

Gobbling Turkey Apples (snack) was a huge hit with the playgroup kids and something small fingers could do pretty easily.


Paper Cup Turkey - I'm thinking these will make great place cards for our Thanksgiving table!


Alex, Anna and I finished up early at playgroup and headed to the elementary school to eat the annual Thanksgiving Feast served at lunch. We had a good time sitting with each child and enjoying lunch together, and I'm really glad we were able to continue this little tradition with them.


Late yesterday afternoon Rebecca explained that her class had earned a movie party and they could bring snacks to class if they brought enough for everyone. She had some elaborate plan to make sugar cookies in the shape of hands to look like turkeys and asked to make the sugar cookie dough. I handed her the recipe and she made it, stuck it in the fridge, and ran off to Activity Day girls. There wasn't time to make hand-print turkeys using sugar cookie dough, even if I do have a hand cookie cutter. But I was able to pull this off (pretty stinkin cute if you ask me) and thankfully it was an acceptable substitute:


We're changing things up for Thanksgiving this year and I'm hosting. Everyone's bringing a little bit of the meal and we're doing a bit of furniture rearranging to fit all 14 of us, but I'm excited to celebrate one Thanksgiving in this house before we move on to larger spaces next year.