Gingerbread Houses

Our annual Gingerbread Houses were made on December 23rd this year. MyDadLovesMeBestSister’s family were all absent this year, as they went to be with CuteNiece2 and her husband for Christmas, since they couldn’t come home this year. (And they have some very exciting news — a new baby in June of 2024, making MyDadLovesMeBestSister a Grandma!) I was sad that half of the family was missing, but we had a grand time anyway — the girls were all so cute — they’re all old enough now to really enjoy the decorating and they were a lot of fun. With three little girls, we decided to make a team for each girl:

Team One:  TheFirstChild, TheSecondChild and FinallyAGirl (now 7 years old).  Their theme was Santa’s Workshop. The boys joked that this team was the only team where one of the little girls actually got to participate. Har Har. But, this is definitely the house where the little girl did most of the work. According to TheSecondChild all the creative ideas came from FinallyAGirl. She loves our little gingerbread competitions and I was SO proud of her this year! She directed the TheSecondChild to do the repetitious little details, like placing “shingles”. (We think TheFirstChild (father to FinallyAGirl) was there for moral support or something LOL.) FinallyAGirl spent a lot of time making all the little details. She wanted to put elves making toys inside the house, but the boys convinced her that it would be hard to see the elves, so she made a little shed on one side of the house where the elf could work. Then, for the front of the house, she made a little Santa checking his list, Mrs. Claus carrying presents on the sidewalk (which I think had fallen over by the time I took pictures), and a reindeer who slipped on the ice. Her little details were perfect — I especially loved the blue ice under the reindeer. Well Done FinallyAGirl!!!

Team Two:  SweetiePie and HurrayAThirdGirl (just turned 4 years old).  Team Two made The Grinch’s Cave (named by HurrayAThirdGirl). They made a beautiful little brick house with vanilla wafer shingles and a beautiful colorful back wall. HurrayAThirdGirl was so cute making the pretty green tree for the front lawn — all those lucious green sprinkles.  And, notice the Grinch standing in the front door.

Team Three:  TheManoftheHouse, Me, and FinallyAnotherGirl (now 5 years old). FinallyAnotherGirl loves the monkey bars at school, so we decided to do a school playground.  TheManoftheHouse made all our ladders for us, and FinallyAnotherGirl worked very hard on all the playground details. She made a hopscotch to the side of the house and a four-square court in the front yard (which, sadly doesn’t appear to be in the pictures), and a big blue slide off the top of the house. Then, she placed children climbing the roof to get in line for the slide. She was very proud to place her purple self at the monkey bars in front of the house.

Voting was really hard this year because I wanted all of the girls to win — they all did such great jobs — they were so patient and worked really hard.  But, we always vote, and the winners this year were SweetiePie and HurrayAThirdGirl — Yay!

Now for between week — hope you’re relaxing and reviewing and getting ready for another year ahead.  The years fly by!
XOXO,
Anna

It’s that time of year again!  (Not sure exactly how that happened — we’ve blitzed through 12 months in 2 1/2 weeks as far as I can tell!)  We’ve had our annual gingerbread competition a little earlier than usual this year with an abbreviated crowd.  Of the five kids between MyDadLovesMeBestSister and I, only 1 could be here this year.  And lucky for us, that 1 was TheFirstChild, because he has SweetiePie and the FinallyGirls.  So, this years crew was The Finally Family, MyDadLovesMeBestSister, CrazyBIL, TheManoftheHouse and me.  Since we were such a small group this year, we decided to divide the three FinallyGirls between the three couples so that each girl would have a house.

Team One:  TheFirstChild, SweetiePie and FinallyAGirl (now 6 years old).  These guys came with a plan!  And for the first time in our gingerbread history, SweetiePie brought some fondant and it was such a success that I’m thinking we’ll be using it a lot more.  FinallyAGirl wanted to do a grinch house and it turned out so cute.  FinallyAGirl placed all the candy on one side of the house while SweetiePie drew the grinch on the other side.  (And TheFirstChild watched a lot of football LOL.)  I love the giant grinch on the roof and the fun Whoville tree in the front yard.  The fun hearts on the back of the house were an afterthought, but they work so perfectly with the theme!

Team Two:  MyDadLovesMeBestSister, CrazyBIL and FinallyAnotherGirl (now 4 years old).  This team decided to make a fun Candy/Soft Serve Ice Cream shop.  CrazyBIL very cleverly fashioned a soft serve ice cream machine out of an ice cream cone and hung it from the front gable.  FinallyAnotherGirl had lots of fun putting candy all over the sides of the house.

Team Three:  TheManoftheHouse, Me, and HurrayAThirdGirl (Just turned 3!) HurrayAThirdGirl LOVES CocoMelon, so we did a CocoMelon house.  This was HurrayAThirdGirl’s first big year working on houses and she seemed to really enjoy it.  She worked really hard on placing all the green M&M’s on the roof panels.  She licked the M&M’s a lot in the process and ate a lot of candy too LOL.  We made a little JJ with a blue suit, but, turns out it’s really hard to make a cute little baby out of gingerbread and they don’t look anything alike.

After we were all done, we had a little voting.  It was so cute to watch the little girls decide if it was ok to vote for themselves.  TheFirstChild voted for all three ’cause, as he put on his note “I love all my girls!”  Anyway, The Grinch was the clear winner, so FinallyAGirl won for the third year in a row!  The houses have now been placed outside, in the cold, to feed the birds and squirrels.  Of which, there seem to be no takers LOL.

So now, on to the big event — hope your plans go smoothly this week!
XOXO,
Anna

Yipee! After last year’s Gingerbread House Competition Cancellation (say that in a hurry!) we were lucky enough to get together and have the family contest this year. We were originally scheduled for the 23rd, but a few members had a little stomach bug, so we thought it might be best to wait a day in hopes that it would be less contagious to the unafflicted. Creating our houses on the 24th isn’t my favorite thing to do, as it competes with our other traditions, but we had a great time and we had lots of frosting and candy everywhere. This year FinallyAnotherGirl was old enough to participate and she was so excited and just cute as could be. So, here’s the team line up for this year:

Team 1: SweetiePie, TheFirstChild and FinallyAnotherGirl. FinallyAnotherGirl LOVES the color lavender and unicorns, so they decided to do a unicorn house in her honor. Sadly, one of the roof pieces buckled halfway through making the house, so it sort of caved in. FinallyAnotherGirl seemed unfazed and she jumped over to another house to help for awhile. Then, awhile later, a few of her older cousins rescued her house and made a tee-pee sort of house.  It was a valiant effort and very cute considering it wasn’t completely finished.

Team 2: TheManoftheHouse and Me. (And a lot of help from FinallyAnotherGirl ;-D). We decided to commemorate the fact that we decorated the girls’ backyard playhouse with a Snoopy for Christmas this year. (I need to find a picture to post — it’s so cute and we had lots of help from my good quilty peep Junie and her husband.)  The nay-sayers didn’t think Snoopy would stay on top of the gingerbread house, but, even though his foot is leaning a little, he held firm.  But.  Do you see the Snoopy problem?  We forgot his ear!  No one even noticed until the day after Christmas — or, at least, if they did, they were too polite to say anything.

Team 3:  CuteNiece1, her newly minted husband, and TheSecondChild.  This funny team decided to celebrate the release of the new Matrix movie (and the fact that CuteNiece1 and her husband decided to watch the first Matrix movies on the 10-hour drive home for Christmas.)  I don’t even pretend to understand the symbolism in this house — all I know is that black box with all the white spots on it is the main computer.  The mess on the “tower” on the right is some sort of helicopter crash and sadly, I didn’t get a good picture of the guy climbing down the tower on the left — you can sort of see him on the right side of the tower in the bottom picture.  CuteNiece1 was very detailed with the black frosting and TheSecondChild was very proud of his Shredded Wheat/Fruit Loop cars.

Team 4:  {Le Sigh}.  As you know, we rarely let a year pass without some sort of naughty or political house.  This year, CuteNephew and CuteNiece2 just couldn’t let the Capitol Riot pass.  Considering we’re a split family politically, it always amazes me that ugly discussions don’t ensue.  But there was lots of fun and joking around about this house.  They did a great job.  CuteNiece2 spent a lot of time on that very clever rotunda and CuteNephew made a great American flag.  The MAGA hats and the little guy with the horns were also really fun — very clever!

Team 5:  MyDadLovesMeBestSister, CrazyBIL, and FinallyAGirl.  Last summer, MyDadLovesMeBestSister organized a trip to the American Girl Doll store in Chicago, so they decided to remember that fun trip.  It was so cute to watch them all working so hard on all the details of this little house.  CrazyBIL created a ladder out of a fruit roll-up to go from the second floor to the third floor.  They also made lots of cute furniture for their American Girl dolls.   Those pink balls on top of the house were originally destined for the unicorn house, but after the cave-in, the vultures swept in and found lots of fun candy!

After all the houses were done, we had our traditional paper ballot vote. We briefly discussed whether we should change our methods to have categories — you know, best design, most creative, etc. but we’re a cut-throat group and that idea was loudly voted down. Everyone can’t be a winner LOL! So, this year’s winners???
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Team 5 – The American Girl Doll House! FinallyAGirl wins for a second competition in a row!!!  Congratulations Team 5!!!!!

I love that my family are all so fun and that they love to show up and make a big mess!  So that’s it for this year — another really fun Gingerbread year.  I hope you’re relaxing this week and catching up from all the holiday rush.

XOXO,
Anna

Hi There!  Are you having a good week between Christmas and New Year’s?  This is my favorite week of the year — lots of time just lying around relaxing, playing games and dreaming of plans for the coming new year.

As promised, I’ve returned for the Gingerbread report.  All of the kids were home for Christmas this year, so we planned our gingerbread competition for the 23rd.  As it turned out, CuteNephew didn’t make it home until the 24th, so we missed having him with us for the fun.  We had a great time as always, and when we were done, there were candy and frosting and sugar ALL over the kitchen.  I think that’s a sign of a successful gingerbread competition!  We had five teams this year, so here they are …

Team 1: CuteNiece2 and her Boyfriend.  First off, let me say, that two of the teams tried to garner votes by tugging at our heartstrings by bringing up memories of BigDaddy.  (Everyone comes prepared with a plan, so they had decided to make BigDaddy houses independently.)  They made us go “Awww”, but our votes weren’t so easily swayed LOL.  Team 1 decided to do their rendition of BigDaddy’s favorite Mexican food hangout.  Inside, they had the family at a big table, with BigDaddy at the head of the table with a giant margarita.  There was a giant taco and burrito on the table and all of the family were wearing their “Bob” shirts.  (One year for Christmas, we surprised BigDaddy by showing up wearing “Bob” shirts.   They all said “Bob’s Daughter” or “Bob’s Grandson” or whatever was the person’s Bob relationship.  It was great fun and made BigDaddy Bob cry.)  On the outside, they included a cactus (very clever!) and had BigDaddy’s pink jeep parked in the parking lot.

Team 2:  MyDadLovesMeBestSister and TheSecondChild.  Team 2 decided to do their rendition of BigDaddy’s workshop.  They spent a lot of time on the little details and it was so cute.  They even left half of the roof off, to make it easier to see the details inside.  They had BigDaddy hammering away at his workbench, a woodstove with a big chimney in the corner, and a table saw.  (How cute IS that tablesaw???)  They also had BigDaddy’s pink jeep parked outside.

Team 3:  TheFirstChild and SweetiePie.  Well.  Not sure what to say about this house LOL.  Their house was a rendition of a local business going up in flames.  They went to a lot of detail on the people inside the building, but I can’t really elaborate on the details and I had to sensor the sign on the front of this building to protect the innocent.  The outside of the building had a lot of flames and a basketball court in the parking lot.  I was amazed that these two actually even finished a house — now that they have babies, they had to interrupt their decorating to take care of them several times — they did a great job!

Team 4:  Crazy BIL and CuteNiece1.  CuteNiece1 owns a small flower business in Chicago, and they created their version of her flower shop.  They had great attention to detail with a little tractor in the back driving among the very colorful rows of flowers.  I loved that they put skylights in the roof (to grow plants in the building, of course) and their use of the cute holly sprinkles on the roof was so clever!

Team 5:  TheManoftheHouse, FinallyAGirl and Me.  I was SO excited when SweetiePie said that I could have FinallyAGirl on our team, and since she’s Frozen crazy, I knew we would have to do a Frozen castle.  At 3 1/2, FinallyAGirl understood what it was all about this year and she did a GREAT job.  I had some little sugar cube snowflakes and I gave her the frosting bag and she squiggled frosting on those snowflakes and then covered them with blue sprinkling sugar.  She did all the sugar sprinkling on the roof too — it was great fun and kept her busy when I had to jump up to get something for someone else.  You could definitely tell where we were working though — there was sugar EVERYWHERE!  She also did a great job placing all the little rock candies along the roof line — she was so careful and it was really fun to watch her.  She also placed the Christmas decorations on the house all on her own when we were busy doing other things – I loved that she was brave enough to just decorate on her own.

When it was all over, it was time to vote! The Flower Farm and the Frozen Castle were tied for the most votes, so we had to have a run-off vote and the Frozen Castle narrowly squeaked out a win. Yay for FinallyAGirl!!!

And, there you have it for another fun year. I hope you’re having a fun, relaxing week — I can’t believe this year is almost over!

XOXO,
Anna

We’re in the final countdown, boys and girls! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s LESS than 10 days until Christmas. Are you ready? I’m woefully behind (as always), but I’m not hosting our Christmas soiree this year, so I can relax about it. On our off years, we don’t do a big tree, so I’m going to try and decorate a little one this afternoon. Shopping still needs a lot of work — I went to target last week and picked up a few rolls of wrapping paper, but I don’t remember carrying them into the house, so I’m thinking I left them there. {Sigh}. I’ll have to get that worked out this afternoon too.

In the meantime, I finally had a little time to sit down and sort through pictures from the annual Gingerbread House Competition. I was looking back on the blog — it seems we missed the last two years — {Gasp!} It’s almost impossible to get all the kids together these days, now that they’re older, but we had them all here on Thanksgiving this year. We decorated the houses on Thanksgiving Eve, and everyone was here except for TheSecondChild. We thought he’d be with us, but at the last minute, he was offered the option to work on the Friday after Thanksgiving or work late on Thanksgiving Eve and have Friday off, so he opted for the latter. We missed him terribly while doing the houses, but we gained an extra day with him, so it was all good!

I’ll start off by saying, the pictures are AWFUL this year. ;-( The light wasn’t the best this time around, so I cranked up the ISO on my camera and went too far and overexposed everything. I’ve tried to tone them down a little on the computer so that some of the details would show, and it’s resulted in really blurry pictures. Plus, I missed all the cute little details on a lot of the houses and we ran out of time — some of us definitely wanted to add more details to our houses.  Oh well, the important thing is that we have a record of the houses so we can remember how much fun we had!

This was our first year with FinallyAGirl and it was so fun. She didn’t really get the decorating idea though, and was a lot more interested in eating the frosting. Poor SweetiePie would pipe a beautiful line of frosting and FinallyAGirl would stick her finger in it. There were a lot of jokes implying that if you wanted to sabotage the competition, just send FinallyAGirl to the other team to “help” LOL.

First up, is the team of CuteNephew and his girlfriend.  They went with the theme of all these states that are now legalizing marijuana and made themselves a little pot plantation.  Everything in green.  Naughty Naughty.

Team 2 was CuteNiece2 and her boyfriend.  They were also casual and did a beach scene with a tiki hut.  Very clever use of colored frosting on all those surfboards.  And don’t miss all the nude sunbathers.

Team 3 was CuteNiece1 and her fiancee.  (Yes!  We have an engagement — very exciting!)  These two are lovingly referred to as our resident hippies and they came through with a bohemian village.  They spent lots of time on all of the little details — I love the little campfire and the “bead” doorway into the house, or tent, or cardboard box LOL.

And then we have Team 4 — MyDadLovesMeBestSister and CrazyBIL.  This is the second year that CrazyBIL has forgotten what he did in previous years and repeated a theme.  We caught him last time and he changed his theme (which resulted in a partially unbloggable house), but we were all so busy this year that it was too late by the time we saw his house.  So, this is the second rendition of Trump’s wall.  Interesting though, ’cause it’s very different than the last version.  I love their clever use of pretzels this year!  I’ll let you decide if they’re supportive of the wall or making fun of it LOL.

Team5 was TheFirstChild, SweetiePie and FinallyAGirl.  They decided to go with a traditional candy house with a red and white theme.  SweetiePie does such pretty frosting work.  Plus — Santa!!!

TheManoftheHouse and I made a pirate ship.  One of the friends who has been with us at the competition in previous years has thrown all caution to the wind, quit his job, and is sailing around the carribean.  He’s having a great time and now actually looks like a pirate with a full-grown scruffy beard. So, our house was an ode to his voyage. The roof is our attempt at the rough blue sea.

It was fun to put the mast on top of the house — there were a few nay-sayers in the crowd when I piped the roping LOL.

As is our custom, we voted for the winner.  Do you think my favorite traditional gingerbread house won???

Noooo.  It was those crazy kids and their Tiki House.  Apparently everyone is dreaming of an island vacation – maybe Santa should re-think his gift list this year!

There you have it!!! Another year in the books. Have fun this week with your final Christmas prep!

XOXO,
Anna