Her Own Drummer

Malia has a strong personality. She has her own ideas of how things should be and most of the time, she cannot be swayed. I learned years ago that she simply doesn’t think the way I do. Even as a preschooler, she pushed back at my way of doing things. She balked at any kind of organizational system I tried to employ in her room. I stopped buying clothes for her without her consent when she was about five because if it was not to her liking, there was no way in the world she was going to wear it. And things that she had happily worn a year or two before became anathema to her. So rather than waste the money, I began consulting her on all clothing purchases. And if she does not want to do something, she really digs in her heels and trying to get her to change her mind is like fighting a forest fire with a Dixie cup of water. Basically impossible. So, we save the big fights for the things that matter. But it’s not that her way is bad, it’s just different than my way. We kind of sum it up by saying that she thinks like an artist, not an OCD perfectionist like me. 

Her style and way of doing things is sometimes more obvious than others. And this evening was one of those times. She invited her longtime friend Acie to join her for an impromptu gingerbread house decorating event. Although both girls had the exact same house kit, Malia assembled hers in her very own way. And was perfectly happy with the results. 

Malia says that if you look at it just the right way, it looks a bit like Rudolph. That’s her artist’s brain working. And yet, she has a point…  😂

Creating a Village Out of a Mountain

Today was gingerbread day and to completely honest, I was ridiculously excited. I think the kids were all excited as well. Even the “big boys” were anxious to get going. One of the things that has prevented me from committing to real gingerbread houses in the past is the fact that royal icing is not Matthew friendly. It’s that whole egg thing. And while buttercream is much tastier, it doesn’t have the holding power of royal icing. But I was determined to at least try to make a stable cookie house, so I searched Pinterest and found several egg-free varieties of royal icing. I selected one and figured if it didn’t work, we could fall back on the less stable buttercream and at least have an entertaining time attempting to make our houses stand. And if they fell down, we could just attribute it to a Christmas earthquake. And no matter what they looked like, they would taste good.

I have a weakness for cute sprinkles and candy eyes because they mesh well with my love of fun food, so we had a bunch of different options to work with. We also purchased several kinds of candy to use as décor and had some buttercream on hand just in case. Once I set the kids loose, the creativity (and the icing) began to flow. And guess what? The egg-less royal icing worked great! It set up hard, but not so hard you would crack a tooth attempting to eat it, which just happens to be one of my pet peeves about normal royal icing. I want my caloric delights to taste as amazing as they look. I mean, isn’t that the point of dessert? To taste good?

We had a wonderful time assembling our creations. And we made a lovely mess. And once we were done, the photoshoot started. During and after the decorating process, I took the requisite blogworthy pictures of each child with their creations, but Daniel went all out while I was cleaning up. We dug out a white sheet for a backdrop, Nathan helped him hold it up, and he went to town. There were pictures of every house from every angle. There were closeups and long shots. There were shots highlighting the wreaths, the Christmas trees, and the candy cane gardens. There were even a few shots of Lego Harry Potter and Lego Cho Chang taking a stroll through the snowy neighborhood. In short, he had a fantastic time making a pictorial record of our day’s work.

I loved today. It was amazingly fun. And being with my most important people in the world made it even better. We’ve all had a rough year but taking time for some whimsy and letting ourselves find joy in the simple things was yet another tender mercy. There is good to be found all around us. And even in an abnormal time, there is normalcy in gingerbread, frosting, and family.

 

 

A Mountain of Gingerbread

When we were inundated with gingerdead men in October, I decided we should revisit the delicious cookies with a more traditional gingerbread theme in honor of Christmas. In the past we have made gingerbread houses with graham crackers, but I’ve never actually baked gingerbread to create dwellings. With multiple houses needing to be created, I got online and found a set of cookie cutters that would create a charming assortment of tiny houses. There was a recipe included with the cookie cutters, but I have a gingerbread cookie recipe I really like so I opted to use that one instead. I mean, why waste so much time and effort on a recipe that may or may not be delicious? I’d rather stick with known results. The info I did glean from the untried recipe was that five cups of flour would make enough cookie dough for two houses. Armed with that information, I tripled my recipe so we would have enough dough for five houses and a cookie Christmas tree.

From how today’s baking went, I’m not sure what the cookie cutter folks are smoking or if they are just making cookies an inch thick, but five cups of flour makes enough cookie dough for at least four houses. My fifteen cups of flour made five houses, a nice tall cookie tree and about five billion gingerbread men and women. Seriously, there is a mountain of cookies sitting on my counter. It’s a good thing we like gingerbread!

 

I Love The Folks At Honey Maid

They make constructing gingerbread houses nearly effortless.  We even found special limited edition gingerbread flavored Honey Maid grahams.  And in spite of the challenge we face in not being able to use royal frosting, we only had to rebuild Matthew’s house once.  After that he was much more careful about how hard he pressed the candies when putting them on.  As is normal for Matthew, he was less than enthusiastic about getting his picture taken.

Nathan got silly and created a whole story about why his house ended up the way it did.  Apparently the cat who lives in the house put so many lights on the roof that it got too hot and blew off and then when it snowed there was snow in the house, including on the t.v.  I have a tendency to think there was  little too much sugar involved in the creation of that story.

Daniel didn’t have a story to accompany his house, but he did include a chimney and a super tall antenna on the roof.

And when they were done, all three boys ate their leftover frosting plain.  Talk about a sugar rush.