The gingerbread house!

As you may recall last Christmas we made a conscious decision to simplify the holiday season.  We did not get a Christmas tree, we did not overly decorate the house, we did not buy a lot of "stuff" and we did not send out Christmas cards.

This Christmas, we're doing much of the same (although we did buy a tree from a local tree farm).  We made most of our gifts (as did my older brother and his wife apparently--can't wait to try the peach sauces!) and I did not send out cards again (I don't think there is a good picture of the three of us anyway from this past year). 

Bud is now sitting on my lap dictating the following sentences...
 
We did however, attempt our first gingerbread house.  The result below is all edible as gingerbread houses should be.  The recipe (and templates) for the house came right out of Joy of Cooking.   Bud and his dad tastefully decorated the house and the yard, complete with a version of the Phillies baseball park called Citizen's Bank Park.  The outfield was made of strips of apple flavored licorice.  The other side of the lawn contains a garden (made from nerds) and a dog made from left over gingerbread and Good n' Plentys with a gumdrop head.  Notice the bowls of leftover candy in the back of the picture.  We have continued to consume this sugar throughout the weekend giving us all sugar highs and subsequent sugar lows (and snarly attitudes).  Tonight, at least, my darling husband will be making homemade chili, which should revive us in time for the last work and school week before the holiday.  

      

Growing up, my father (B's Grandpa Karl) often got carried away with the annual gingerbread house.  By the end of the gingerbread era in our household, we had a totally furnished and well-lit two-story gingerbread house complete with dormer, stained glass windows, and a working chimney.  The yard included picket fences, forests (made from upside down ice cream cones), driveways, automobiles, children building snowmen, and pets wandering around.  I believe we even had smaller graham cracker houses encircling the main house for other folks to live in.

It was always a sad day on January 1st, when the three of us kids would unceremoniously smash the house (or village, as may be the case).  Then, to the horror of my parents, we would greedily eat the stale and not so tasty pieces of gingerbread, frosting and candy.  I am surprised that none of us came down with salmonella poisoning (you have to watch out for that Royal Icing) or some other bacterial infection!  

(and now  Bud starts writing the post from my perspective, showing off his fabulous typing and spelling skills)

My son thought the gingerbread house turned out to be incredible. Even though his first thought for the ginger bread house was to make it the White house. He got a little carried away (like my father always did). My son got inspired for the white house when we went to the Eastman house to see the gingerbread collection. After we went to the Eastman house my son was just amazed by all the neat things we saw.

In addition to the gingerbread house we are making all sorts of cookies. In fact when I finish my blog post (which my son is proofreading) we are going to decorate the cookies with green, blue, white, red, yellow, and a few other colors of icing. Right now we are going to decorate the cookies! 

Well, we just finished making cookies. I will tell you how it went! Well first my son and I went out to the kitchen where my husband was making Chili. We had peppers near us and my husband decided to eat one. He was coughing and his throat was burning and he had to eat bread and get water and he was doing that for 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile my son was laughing his head off and couldn't breath he was laughing so hard because my husband's mouth was burning. My son said "Dad you are quite weird" and that set me on the track of laughing. My son laughed for about 10 minutes and he was rolling on the floor and all that. Well after that it turned out pretty good. Me and my son made all the cookies and decorated them and my darling husband was OK.  That was most of what happened when we were making cookies.

First Fridays: December wreath making

Where has the time gone?  I have two posts in my mind (one is on the kitchen floor, the other concerning turkeys and toilets) but obviously have not written or published them.  And, right now, it is December 2nd, which means it's  First Friday post time!

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go help a neighbor make wreaths to support our sustainable living group (and to learn how to make a wreath).  The wreaths were going to be auctioned off in the annual village "Adorn-a-dore" contest which supports our local community art gallery in town.  So, it had to be at least a decent looking wreath.

What I discovered, is that using grape vine as a frame is the BEST THING EVER (well, at least when it comes to making wreaths).  It is the most forgiving natural material I have ever met.  You can use it dry or wet, and you just keep twisting the vine upon itself until you have the shape you want.  Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the wreaths we constructed for the auction, which had a high bid of at least $75 (our informant left before the auction ended), but this morning (when I should have been studying pathophysiology) I spent about 45 minutes making a wreath for our household. 

The options for materials are endless, but I used evergreens, rose hips (holly or winterberry would also obviously work), some sort of dried seed pods, and white wool.  Here's are some photos to inspire you.  And I do want to remind everyone that I have ZERO creative or artistic talent.  I am an analytical, in-the-box thinker, and this was actually not that difficult to do, thanks to the grapevine. Also, the only "non-natural" part of the wreath is the little loop of wire attaching it to the nail.  There are no plastic or metal frames, wires or ties.  Again, thanks to the grapevine.

You can twist the grapevine into a variety of shapes.






Adding some greens.  I used two varieties from evergreen trees we have, but don't ask me what varieties.  One was more prickly than the other, that's about all I can say!  I just sort of wove them into the grapevine.





Adding rosehips and some seed pods. 





I added sheep's wool to add some white to the red, white and green.  Not sure what I think of it though. 

Happy wreath making!

Holiday Tales

My darling husband, Bud and I (and Belle) just arrived back from a pleasant visit to Boston to see my folks and brothers.  It was great fun to catch up with everybody in the middle of a blizzard.  We managed to see the Nutcracker (Bud enjoyed the production, but he was a little shocked to see the Nutcracker in such tight white tights), go sledding, venture out using the T (Boston's public transportation system) which Bud loved, and visit the Harvard Musuem of Natural History which not only has the unique glass flower collection, but is also a taxidermist's haven.  I could have spent all day looking at the glass flowers (they really do look absolutely real--you could never tell they were made from glass) but Bud was enjoying looking at all the stuffed animals.  Darling husband was interested to see if I would write a post about how the Rich White Man was able (Is Still Able?) to go to Exotic Places and Exploit their Resources and bring back Specimens to Stuff, but I think that is a post that deserves its own space, which is not right now.

The blizzard dumped about a foot of snow in the city of Cambridge.  It is curious to witness how city people deal with snow.  True, there really is no place to put it.  And the plows really do plow in cars that are parked on the streets.  The four adults in our party spent a good hour digging out the cars mid-morning.  But walking the dog as the sun was setting, there were still folks just starting to attempt the chore.  While there were some conentiuous moments in the neighborhood about the legality of "saving" dug out parking spaces with lawn chairs, trash cans etc (and the city of Boston does have a law on the books saying that one has 48 after the snow emergency ends to remove lawn chairs from parking spaces), it was heartening to see a group of teenangers walking around offering to help shovel out folks. 

One of the highlights of the visit, aside from the storm, was a drawing for my older brother's canned goods that he and his fiancee canned last summer.  I myself freeze or dry more than can (something about not having a lot of time or patience prevents me from canning much), but Bro and his sweetheart canned cherries, made ketchup, peach butter, tomato sauce, apple butter, pickles from summer squash, among other goodies.  Last year, they sent us canned vegetable bouillion, relish and peaches. I am truly envious of all their preserving.  His sweetheart also works for a botanical soap company out in Montana so we now have organic soap to last all year (did you think we smelled that bad?!) and our own soap making kit in case we run out!  You can check out her soap here.

My younger brother was also very thoughtful and supplied me with an awesome pair of moutaineering gloves from Eddie Bauer (I could actually care less about where they come from as long as they keep my hands warm). They are probably the most high-tech pair of gloves I've seen, let alone owned, and are made of leather (including little grippy things) but obviously include a super warm lining and there is even a "snot band" on the thumb to wipe away that 5:30am cold snot (yes, it happens).  I have never climbed a real mountain (I stick with big hills), but I'm thinking if these gloves can keep a moutaineer warm, they can keep me warm doing the morning feedings.   

Since my darling husband and I bought each other a fully functional door for Christmas along with two storm doors and some professional weatherstripping (our farmhouse has 5 entrances), we didn't really exchange gifts.  My parents were thoughtful enough to give us a deep dish pie/quiche dish, which is fabulous, since I only have an apparently very small pie dish.  Quiche is usually a mainstay in the family (and apple pie is a dessert staple in the fall when we have oodles of apples), although now our chickens have stopped laying and we no longer have a supply of eggs.  Luckily, the Natural Foods store down the road does.  Along that line, it looks like we're going to dispatch most of our hens this weekend (the Buff Orpingtons were originally a friend's and I promised we wouldn't send them to "camp" so they will stay along with the rooster).  As my darling husband says, it may be an ominious way to start the New Year but you have to take advantage of the warm weather when we have it.

As we head towards the dusk of this year and the dawn of another, I will not burden you with reflections of the past or resolutions for the future.  I wish everyone a blessed New Year and to remember the words of Julian of Norwich,  "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."