House Building

| December 20, 2014

As she does every year, Sam wanted to make a gingerbread house this year. I bought molds a long time ago with the intention of starting from scratch instead of buying a Wilton kit. Well….best intentions and all.  Yeah, that didn’t happen. In fact, I got even more lazy this year and bought a non-Wilton house that came preassembled! (Yay, Target!) Maybe next year I’ll get more adventurous.

At any rate, prefabricated or not, Sam was very excited to start decorating. I bought her a bunch of extra little doodads to use since what comes in the kits is a little boring, and she got working.

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She did her own thing, didn’t follow the box at all, which is fine, but it was such a switch from last year and other years when she wanted everything to look perfectly like the picture.

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This year, she did the whole thing by herself. I put on exactly 2 lights. The rest she did on her own. She wouldn’t even let me help her with the frosting except to get the one tube started a bit. She is getting so big now that she doesn’t really need any help. I wanted to help, I mean, geez, decorating a gingerbread house is fun, but, well, it was hers, so I let her do whatever she wanted.

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She wanted to paint in the windows so Mark tinted some frosting for her and gave her a paintbrush. She did a great job!

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Her imagination is so vast. The stories she was telling me about what she was doing were great. The little gingerbread people were her absolute favorite. She kept making them talk the whole time about their house, and where was their furniture and whatnot. Her most favorite was the baby gingerbread, complete with diaper. You can see it in the bottom left corner. The family also has a gingerbread cat and dog.

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She let her dad help a bit, but only to give her some ideas, not to actually do anything!

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Almost done!

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Here is her finished product, from all sides. The Christmas tree on the window is like seeing their tree in the house, all decorated.

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The two yellow lights were my big contribution. All the rest is Sam. Mark had her write her name on the house so everyone knew it was her creation.

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They tried writing her name in frosting and putting sprinkles on it, but it was too hard to read. You can see it on the bottom of the roof. The little balls are “presents falling down the chimney.” The two blue lights on the house are a clock. She made the reindeer Rudolph, as you can see, by adding a red nose.

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The elves are ready to go home in the sleigh. The big bunch of gumballs are grapes. Grapes on the roof? Yup. That’s what she said.

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The green light on the floor with a face is “Super Light”. You can see he has a drawn on black cape behind him. He is there to save the day from the monster who is trying to steal Christmas (you will see him shortly on the other side). He is quite the villain, as you can see, he knocked out the poor little guy on the bottom right.

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Eek! The monster who tried to steal Christmas! Do you see him? It’s the evil looking blue guy with red eyes! Save us, Super Light, save us!

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Another gingerbread house done for Christmas. It was so much fun this year, listening to Sam, watching her mind work. Next year, she told me she wants to build a gingerbread train, like her cousins, Owen and Ethan. Oh boy. Who knows what crazy adventure that train will go on, if this year’s story is any indication of what is to come!