Gingerbread Intervention

A lopsided seven hour project

The packaging called to me from across the seasonal aisle at Wegman's grocery store. Pictures of mother and child, placing candies on an irresistibly cute gingerbread house. What a wonderful idea, I thought, to decorate a gingerbread house with the children over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Not so, my dear friends, not so. If you have heard the siren call of the pre-baked gingerbread house kits, I am here to provide an intervention.

First, you have to make the mortar. Technically, this involves ingredients common to all icing mixtures. The difference is that it will have approximately the same consistency as wet Playdough, with twice the mess. Since I don't own a pastry-bag to pipe the icing, I modified a Zip-Lock baggie by snipping a hole in the corner of the bag.

Do not do this. The icing (commonly known as "royal" icing, since it is a royal pain in the *$$) is so thick it will simply burst out of the top of the bag, and adhere itself to your hands. Have you ever seen The Blob? It's like that, only this blob is also capable of inducing a diabetic coma.

At approximately this time, your four year old will wander in and say, "COOL! A gingerbread house! Can I help?" The answer is NO. Do not let any child come into contact with either the gingerbread or the cement-like icing. You will be sorry for it. Very, very sorry. It may be weeks until you get the icing-spackle out of their hair. Consider yourself warned.

After you get the walls up, you have to wait two hours for the icing to harden before installing the roof. During this time, you will hear the following phrases repeated every two minutes:

"Can I put candies on it yet? Can we eat it? Can I play with it yet?"

After two hours, the icing will have hardened. This also includes the first batch of icing you made, since the ziplock baggie has burst. The next phase involves making more icing, installing the roof, and waiting another two hours.

"Why is it taking so long, Mommy? WHHHYYYYYY?"

Once the construction phase is over, the decoration can begin. This phase should also be done sans children. If you do this with your children, they will eat about half the candy (and icing), get royal-pain-in-the-*$$-icing all over the kitchen, and possibly knock down a gingerbread wall. Also, they will get frustrated when the candies don't actually stick to the walls. This will add whining and crying into the sticky-hands-sugar-hyped mess.

I just ate about 1,000,000 gumdrops.

I finally kicked the kids outside and finished decorating the house. I made gumdrop trees, tried to spackle on some "icicles," and included a cute little gingerbread Santa Claus on the outside of the house.

Santa or a Shriner? You decide.

The house took 7 hours to create. Seven. Whole. Hours. I was going to move the finished product to our dining room table, but the icing has dried to the counter top. It will remain on the kitchen counter, possibly forever.

At least, I thought to myself, it is a cute little wintry wonderland scene.

Then the four year old came inside.

"Wow, Mom! That is a really spooky witch's house!"

Four-year-old children are harsh critics

I now spend approximately 50% of every day chasing children away from the candy-coated "witch's" house. We'll see how long it lasts!