Gingerbread House

On Sunday, November 30 Bishop Jeppson threw down the gauntlet: Our ward Christmas party was coming up on Friday, December 5 and there was going to be a gingerbread house contest! (And he may have said something like we wouldn't be able to beat him.) Well! Since we make a gingerbread house every year, we would just have to do ours that week and enter the contest too.

Unfortunately for our building project, that was the same week that Brandon's school musical was running. He played Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof, and I had to run him up town to the theater and back home again, Monday through Thursday night that week. But the play was fun, and Brandon did an awesome job!!

"The papas!" (Tradition)

Lazar Wolf speaks to Tevye about Tzeitle 

"A milk cow?! So I won't be lonely?"

To Life

"Lazar Wolf, I have always wanted a son . . . but I wanted one a little younger than myself!"

"He shamed me in front of the whole village!"

It seems like I was doing a bunch of other stuff that week too, but I can't remember what. Anyway, what that meant was that we didn't even get to start on the house until Friday morning. So, naturally, I kept all my kids home from school that day because, yes, I am the kind of mother who keeps her kids home from school all day to build a gingerbread house. And it was going to be done no later than 5:30 that evening so we could enter it in the contest because, yes, I am a little competitive.

But first I had to take Kaylie to the orthodontist that morning and we didn't get home until 10:40, and I still had to finish drawing the house patterns. At 11:45-ish we were finally putting the first pieces into the oven to bake; we didn't finish baking the house until 3:30—only two hours to pour the windows, build and decorate our house! Aaaaaagh!

cutting out the windows

pouring hard-candy syrup in the decorated windows
(I was told we almost got disqualified because they thought the windows were plastic—the entire house had to be edible.)

the girls dip pretzel sticks—which we ended up not using
(except for one)

Rachel makes frosting glue

I finished building the house and the girls got some minimal decorating done by 5:37. Just in time to rush to the party (which started at 6:00).

Jessica, with our entry

Yes, it was the biggest house—standing next to the smallest houses entered. (Ours was actually not my favorite house in the contest; I voted for another one.)

This . . .

. . . and this is what we came home to after the party.

But we won the "People's Choice" award!
(I think it's the fancy windows that did it.
And maybe the super-cute snowmen.)

But that is not the end of the gingerbread house story. Nope.
We still wanted to really decorate our house.

Rachel begins by covering a big crack in the wall.

While the girls decorated the house, Ryan and I worked on something else. Can you tell what it is?

And here's the finished house:

Yay!

Didn't they do a nice job?