How NOT to make a Gingerbread House.

This is the story about the day that I decided to become a "Martha Stewart Mom" and make some memories with my daughter


Step 1.) Decide that since your husband has gone to a high school reunion for the weekend and it's raining, this would be a good time to "bond" with your daughter over a home baked gingerbread house...how festive!!! and how hard could it be...really???

Step 2.) Take your little angel to the grocery store and buy $29.00 worth of candy and

supplies...telling EVERYONE what a wonderful mother you are...and your going to bake a beautiful festive gingerbread house!!...Forget a bag of ingredients at Walmart and stop halfway through the recipe to load back up in the truck and go get said bag.....OK, back home...




Step3) Dress your daughter up in a new apron and get crackin! Within minutes use every mixing bowl in your tiny kitchen and have at least a pound of flour at your feet....but were having FUN!!!







Step4) Run out of molasses 1/2 cup short...but so what?...whose going to REALLY eat the walls???...Keep on baking!!!

(I am NOT going back to the store!!) The dough comes out great!! and actually seems like things are going remarkably well so far!!

Step5) Cut out the walls and roof using the downloaded template from the computer....Here is where things went wrong I will learn MUCH later....

Step6) Create a graham cracker cookie house for your daughter to keep her from asking you for the 1,000,000th time..."Mom, can we put the candy canes and marshmallows on now?" So she can do just that while the gingerbread house bakes and cools...and I sit down for a few minutes....This keeps her quiet for a while....(Because her mouth is now completely full of candy for pretty much the remainder of the day). This is where I stopped taking pictures because the house was done and it was time for me to start my "Creation".

Step 7) As I said in step 5...things went wrong at the "cutting out" point because the template "eluded" to a cut that shouldn't have been...I learned this as I was holding two walls up with one hand...trying to "glue" them together with my homemade Martha Stewart royal icing...propping up one side with a box of jell-o that I grabbed with my teeth from the cabinet and of course I couldn't let the walls go until the icing "set up" then, as I stood there going over the next step in my head the realization set in ...there was no place to attach my roof.....ARE YOU FRIGGIN KIDDING ME???????

(probably a good thing there are no pictures of this particular part because it got ugly.)

I propped up the walls with everything I could reach and grabbed my roof to be SURE I wasn't mistaken. I wasn't. Just then, the whole thing imploded...one wall cracked in half and I snapped.

Step 8) Open the kitchen window and hurl the entire gingerbread house out of it. OH yes I did!!!

Carlie came out into the kitchen to say..."Mom?...Why you trow de gingerbwead house out de window?" Because I MESSED IT ALL UP!...(What a wonderful lesson to teach my impressionable daughter....But right then and there... I was too mad to care!!!)

She thought that was just hysterical, disappeared and returned with a pretzel..."Mom...You shawe my pretzew wid me?"
I wondered if anyone was walking down the street when I opened the window and flung a whole gingerbread house out it... My neighbors must think by now I'm a lunatic, this isn't the first kitchen disaster to go out my window....

Step 9) So now what do I do with the fact that I have all this friggin candy and no gingerbread house?

I go to Shaw's and buy that damned kit that I scoffed at a week ago thinking...."That's for losers... I can make my OWN!" HA HA HA!!! Foolish me.

So at 6:30pm I loaded up Cricket Carlie and myself and we headed to the store to by the "Looser Gingerbread house kit" just to get the FRIGGIN THING DONE!!! After that, we stopped at McDonalds for dinner ( Because we've eaten so healthy so far all day, why break a cycle?) And then headed home.

Step 10) Once we ate our most nutritious dinner, I opened the " Looser kit" and took out the dinkiest little cardboard looking un appetizing gingerbread house I have ever seen..."F____IT!" I dove in with every bag of candy I had and decorated the hell out of that house!!

Carlie had long since lost total interest in anything but stuffing as much candy into her mouth as possible and was continually hopping at this point on a crack like sugar high while watching NICK JR. for the third cosecutive hour.

Before I knew it it was 8:30PM and I had run out of places to stick candy onto this little creation of mine. THANK GOD THAT IS OVER!!!!

Step11) Survey the damage. After all was said and done, the kitchen was DESTROYED. Royal icing by the way sets up to a cement like substance that can only be removed with scalding hot water and a putty knife. I had dishes everywhere and I was stepping on graham crackers, candy and chunks of gingerbread house everywhere I went...(This was SUCH a good idea).

So after bribing Carlie into my bed and getting her to lie still for 5 minutes she passed out cold.

I did the dishes....chiseled off the counter tops and made myself a spiked eggnog with an Excedrin chaser.

I will probably never attempt this again...good thing I took these pictures so I can one day prove that I made an effort at being a "Martha Stewart Mom". But by then, Carlie will know me well enough to realize I tried...and it's not me. And I think I just realized that too.