Gingerbread House Tradition

I love sentimental traditions. This is a big time of year for such things...Baking holiday cookies to share, large family gatherings with recipes that have been passed down for generations, dishes that only come out for big events, special ornaments for Christmas trees. I've learned many lessons from having traditions, made many fond memories, and enjoy continuing them with my own children. Each Christmas season I think about my childhood neighbor, Mrs. Carpenter, who was part of several memorable traditions. She was a very tiny woman who had a very large white house, a perfectly manicured lawn, and quite a book collection. She was an influential person in my life. She took me to get my very first library card. We'd get new books regularly, walking to town together. She let me "help" her gather up her raked leaves in the fall, placing them in wire baskets to dump in the woods behind her home. She was a retired teacher, she was old school, she was so incredibly smart and kind in her own way. I admired her greatly. 

She started a Christmas tradition that I've carried on with my own children: the seasonal decorating of a gingerbread house. Each year Mrs. Carpenter would assemble the gingerbread house from a kit before I went over to decorate so it was ready to go when I got there. I loved it! The goal was to decorate it even better than the previous year. She would encourage and praise my efforts. The tradition lives on!!! Each year I purchase a gingerbread kit for my own children, similar to this one. I assemble it, my children decorate it, and they love it! There's always a lot of taste testing of the candies. You know, just to make sure they're good enough for our sure-to-be-amazing gingerbread house. A family favorite are SweeTarts mini chewy candies. We hide them from my husband until our decorating is complete, he can gobble up a bag of those in no time at all!

This year our family took turns battling the flu, so I didn't get out to purchase the traditional gingerbread kit. Ugh! At least it passed through before Christmas break! My daughter and I were home with fevers, on the mend from the worst of the flu storm (whew!), and she asked if we could try to make our own. Hmm? Yes, what a great idea! We had never made one from scratch before so we researched gingerbread houses for ideas. Clare liked a lot of things! We sketched, measured, cut, and planned together. She would be a great foreman and/or architect. It took longer than we thought it would, but we were excited! 

We looked up a gingerbread recipe online and set to work mixin' it up! Clare thought our molasses and brown sugar looked like a sandcastle with a moat. Ah, a beach sounds pretty nice right now...

Clare helped scoop dough from the bowl to roll it out on overturned cookie sheets covered in parchment paper. The lip around the rim of the cookie sheets would have been a problem while rolling out our dough, so we flipped them over. Worked like a charm!

We worked together to arrange our cut template pieces on the surface of our dough. We had to roll out a few slabs in order to have enough pieces for our house. After our template pieces were in place, we used a small knife dipped in flour to cut around them. The dough was a bit sticky, even after chilling, so the flour helped prevent the dough from sticking to the knife and gobbing up our cut lines. The recipe we used said to bake the pieces inside of the slab they were cut from, so into the oven they went!

When it came out of the oven the pieces were slightly distorted. Following the recipe directions, we replaced the template pieces and cut around them again, then let the pieces cool on the pan. 

We decided not to try cutting out the windows, as we'd originally planned to do. We would simply trace them with frosting later. 

Two of our pieces really cracked, a roof piece and a wall piece. The roof piece was waaaaaay beyond repair, crumbling to bits, but we were able to save the wall piece. To replace our roof piece we mixed up sugar cookie dough (a Mrs. Carpenter recipe), and set to work assembling the gingerbread house pieces that we did have while the dough chilled. 

The cracked wall piece was becoming a real problem. It became weaker and weaker as we assembled the house. It probably would have been helpful to have a cardboard foundation under the cookies pieces to stabilize them (like cereal box cardboard). We didn't do that, lesson learned. Since the frosting stiffens over time, we decided to use it as a cement or grout for the broken wall pieces. We smeared it on the side of the crack, pushed the pieces together, smoothed the oozing frosting, and we waiting for it to set. To cover the frosting line crack we decided to use graham crackers to build a chimney. We covered the chimney in frosting, sticking marshmallows to it for a "stone" look. We were very pleased, and had fun creatively problem solving through this process!

Back to the missing roof piece. By this point we were getting tired. I was baking birthday cake for my daughter while assembling this thing and wasn't excited about baking sugar cookies if I didn't have to (the dough could be chilled and saved for later). My husband suggested using the cover to an old book that he had laying around from scanning textures for another project. We giggled, but thought it was a neat-o idea! Nobody eats our gingerbread houses anyway, and it'd be a story. The cover really didn't want to stick to the house, so we propped it up with a Fiesta jar until the frosting had set really well. 

Our next problem was how to cover the roof to disguise our book cover without adding too much weight from frosting? RITZ CRACKERS! Having been so ill, we had plenty on hand! They worked PERFECTLY! 

After drying and setting overnight, the house was ready to decorate! I had mixed up frosting for birthday cake decorating, so while I worked on cake decorating, the kids piped frosting and decorated our gingerbread house. This was a lot of work, but we all agree that it was our best house ever! We are definitely going to attempt to improve our gingerbread house building skills next year! 

Making Time to View the Rocks

Life gets busy, I totally get it. Rush to school, rush home, rush to activities, there's always a million things to do. Today my husband has the flu. THE FLU! What horrible timing! Let's face it, there's never really a good time for feeling lousy, but we're going into the second week of school and there's a lot to do! But today our plans changed, we dropped everything, and the kids and I decided we would make homemade chicken noodle soup for their dad. My grandmother always said that chicken was medicinal, and we sure could use all the help we can get! The kids and I grabbed our shoes, held our breath, and darted out the door for the grocery store!

Just outside of the nearest town, on the hill that overlooks the dam at the end of the lake, something on the edge of the road caught my eye. While driving to the store I noticed that the usual wall of rock at the top of this hill had unusual rock piles at the bottom of it. I slowed down and was excited to see that someone had been making balanced rock sculptures there! They were just tall enough to peek over the tall grasses on the bank at the edge of the road. I vowed to get a closer look.

On our way home the kids and I stopped to investigate, we wanted a closer look. We talked about not touching the work of others. If something is going to happen to these balancing rocks we're going to leave it to nature so others can enjoy these little sculptures. We talked about the time it must've taken to create them. There had to be 20+ stacks scattered about along the road! How long did each one take? How many visits were made to continue the work? Is it the work of one person or many? A friend suggested it could be the work of Sasquatch. Perhaps a family of them? My neighbor said she saw a woman that drives a Subaru parked along the road there, working to balance rocks. 

For whoever is doing it, I hope it continues. It was a lovely surprise on a germ filled day, the time it took to create these was appreciated, and it caused my family to pause for a moment to enjoy something new instead of rushing through our to-do list. We greatly admire the collection. Smell the roses, view the rocks, you won't regret it. 

Vintage Map

One mans trash is another mans treasure, and for my family it couldn't be more true! Few things in our home are brand new. Older things have dings, scratches, patina, wear, and markings that tell a story. Everyone loves a good story. These items have character. Plus, the thrill of the find is part of the fun! Every year for our anniversary we go on a hunt for a cool new-to-us old find to add to our collection. 

This year we had a vintage map framed for our walls. IT. IS. AWESOME. And huge. Let's focus on the awesome part...I've seen plenty of boring maps and boring wall art, but vintage school maps from the 50's and 60's had such rich colors they're hard not to notice. We came across a bundle of maps and gave most of them away. This map of the USA was the only one we kept. So much of the world has changed names, but we can talk with our kids about this map and it's relevant. Their future social studies and geography teachers won't scold us for confusing them. Maybe it'll improve their Scrambled States of America game skills!

Check out that gorgeous color! They're beautiful enough to inspire the color palette of a room! Those oranges and greens together are soooo goooood...The mountain shadows, the tints and shades, the fonts used, it's truly a winning aesthetic mix!

For our anniversary, Randy visited Marwin Cummings, known for his woodworking and framing skills, to tackle the best way to go about framing this map (40" x 48"!!!). Mr. Cummings is kind, generous, knowledgeable, and skilled. 

Mr. Cummings and Randy did a BEAUTIFUL job mounting and framing this! It will be a focal point and conversation piece in our home! Sincerest thanks sir!

  

Check out that font! We love this part of the map. Orange is Randy's favorite color, and I love green. What a great mix! Stunning map, fantastic framing, lucky eyeballs!

Haitian Art

A few years ago I read about a couple that saved up their nickels and dimes to buy artwork. They invested in things they really wanted to look at, things that told a story, that inspired them, that they loved. In a world of changing fads it's a very personal choice. It means you're comfortable with your own taste, that you don't need others to like what you like, and that is freeing. Randy and I collect art and things we like to look at. Our walls are an eclectic mix of graphic design, old signs, metal bits and wooden things. And color. Lots of color. When I was younger my grandmother had a green room. It was her favorite color (it's mine too). I thought it was so cool that she chose it as the color of an entire room, not caring if anyone else liked it or not. I decided that when I had a house of my own that I would choose fun colors that I liked too, and I have.

Some of our friends think I'm crazy because our walls are sooo green, others think it's fun and whimsical, some say it's "funky". The most important thing is that my family loves it. It makes a great backdrop for all of the miscellaneous things hanging about the room. 

This is one of the newest additions to our funky walls. My mother-in-law and several wonderful folks from her church have made regular trips to Haiti to help a school there. They have done incredible things for children. Before her last trip my husband asked her to please bring home Haitian artwork, and she did! While visiting family this summer she invited us over to choose a piece of artwork to take home with us, and I fell in love with this bright metal tap tap bus! Tap Taps are brightly painted buses used as taxis in Haiti. They don't move forward until filled. I love that it has character, it's metal, I love the texture, and the colors are gorgeous. 

Each piece of art on our walls has a story. My mother-in-law would say that some of them are conversation pieces, and this metal tap tap bus truly is. Metal Haitian art is made by repurposing the steel from transported oil drums. The top and bottom are removed, the drum is set on fire to burn off any residue and paint, and when cooled they are cut open and flattened into a sheet. Then the art begins! My husband knew how much I loved this piece and chose it from the his mothers collection even though he really really loved a painting a bit more. When I realized he'd done this I arranged for the painting to be his Father's Day gift. He was thrilled!

Wood is hard to come by in Haiti so when you buy paintings from an artist they remove the canvas or painted material and keep the wooden frame it was painted on. You roll up your new painting and take it with you, they attach another piece of material to the wooden frame you left behind and do another painting to sell. The sizing isn't always a traditional frame size. In order to hang this painting Randy had to stretch it and staple it to a new frame (in this case, an old board). 

He added an outer frame that he made out of old barn boards, and it's PERFECT. 

The bold graphic colors really stand out against each other. It also pops against the bright green wall of the living room. Being able to look at inspiring things that we enjoy has made this tiny house a cozy home. 

Mary Blair

Mary Blair is one of my FAVORITE illustrators. She was also favored by Walt Disney. Have you ever ridden "It's a Small World"? She was the mastermind behind the whimsy colorful style. Her influence can be seen in several Disney works, including Cinderella, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland. Her color styling is genius, how could you NOT love it?! If you didn't click on her name earlier, go HERE and feast your eyes on her gorgeous work.
Foundation folks, gotta know what I'm referencing here...ready?!
Awesome, me too...

Randy and I don't typically buy each other gifts. It's too difficult to keep the surprise when money is coming from the same place, and we don't really need much. What do we do instead? We make each other cards. We have quite a collection and we love them; however, every once in a great while we stumble across something ultra cool. Something so unique you need it around just so you can look at it and love it. I guess you could say our style is  "mclectic".
See what I did there? McKee + eclectic = mclectic. And it's true. 

Randy is an avid blog reader, keeping up to date on current trends and feeding his creative side with amazing things people are making and thinking and sharing. He stumbled across the work of Dustin Harbin, and what a creative feast his stuff is. I love his illustration style, the black lines, the shapes, it's really good stuff. Really really good stuff. He does artwork to sell, and you can commission "person of interest" drawings. You pay the man, tell him who you want a drawing of (typically a famous person), he draws it and mails it to you. That's it. It's really that easy. Even though you know what you've ordered the end result is a fantastic surprise. I chose a fun yellow frame from Michaels. It's perfect. So, last year for my birthday, in addition to a lovely card, Randy surprised me with this beauty. She now hangs in a cluster of other cool things we like looking at on my living room wall. Our eyeballs are lucky.