Monday, December 7, 2009

Pathetic, Really


“Pathetic isn’t he?” Ron Weasley asks Harry Potter in the first book of the same name.

“Just a little,” replies Harry.

And pathetic is what you would say to my attempt at building a gingerbread house.
Despite the urge to create a cookie masterpiece, I should have known the end result would be far less spectacular than what I had imagined. After all, my incredibly patient mother vowed she would never make one again.

My brothers and I used to make Christmas gifts from my mom’s brother, sisters and parents. One year, we created six gingerbread houses, which, I might add, looked a lot better than the monstrosity I created yesterday.

First of all, I used a mix. My husband free-handed the house design, which I then baked and cooked up trees, a reindeer and gingerbread men with the extra dough. Yesterday, I whipped up a different type of icing and tried to stick the pieces together.

Yikes.

My peaked roof became a flat one and the entire house has a lean to it. I could hear the ‘Christmas lights’ falling off and hitting the ‘ground’ and the wreath slid down, pushing the door to the floor. But my chimney and gingerbread man look good, and the presents - which I did create - are pretty impressive, too.

Unfortunately, the icing tastes terrible and the cookie itself isn’t that great either. So it will be pathetic decoration for the holidays and then the compost can have it.

6 comments:

Stephanie said...

my girlfriend jenn did a gingerbread haunted house for halloween. she did a fantastic job but i will tell you that it too her the entire day...almost 9 hours to create it and there were a whole lot of special things she had to do to get it done. while it was a fantastic site, i would never be able to dedicate that kind of time to something i couldn't then eat. i prefer you house lisa, its looks tasty, it seems you probably had fun making it, and although it is not professional looking it looks very festive :)

Betty said...

I will never forget the time my daughter and I made a Christmas house...... not like yours, but pretty close. That was the first one and the last one. :) :)

I did however use royal icing and it did help.

I didn't eat it, but had fun watching the kids attack it. :)

CoconutPalmDesigns said...

I've only ever made one of those at a friend's house and we used a kit. I'm proud of you for attempting to do one from scratch and who cares if it doesn't look professional. I like it!

Lynn said...

Still better than anything I could do!

Mama Up! said...

My guess... it was meant to be a soft gingerbread. The mix, I mean. There's the nice soft stuff for eating and the hard stuff for building and never shall they meet.

But who cares what it looked like if it was tasty, yeah?

JD said...

Awesome! At least you were brave enough to try baking the house. I didn't even do that - bought a kit at Target - and my roof was STILL lopsided. And I thought I was pretty decent at crafty stuff. Embarrassing.

PS - found you on SITS!