constance | My life's gotten simple since.

For the past week or so, I've been really struggling my way through NaBloPoMo, which I will call by its proper name just this once. I was all talked out, I thought! I had told you everything, and then some! But I guess it turns out I was just choked from THE UNBELIEVABLE PRESSURE OF THE MANDATORY ONE-A-DAY POST, because now that the end is upon me, I've suddenly got lots to say. Of marginal interest, it's true, but that's always true.

So. Here we are. Done, after this one thing:

I have been lately obsessed with the idea of making a gingerbread house. But not just any gingerbread house, oh no. I want to make a slightly truncated replica of my house. Which is ridiculous for several reasons: (1) Who'd eat it? Because I can't. ((1a) I thought of donating it to a children's home when I'd finished, but do people actually eat gingerbread houses anyway? I am unclear on this.) (2) It'd be a huge expense. (3) Ditto the time investment. (5) I have never actually made a gingerbread house, and a really elaborate one is probably not such a good place to start. (4) I've got lots of things I really do have to do, you know, other than making tiny candy tables and chairs.

And yet this idea, it has hold of me. It will not let me go. Help me, I am begging you.

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Man, I would so like to kidnap you and bring you in as a ringer for my Gingerbread House Team this year. Last year I finally led a team to victory in the annual office gingerbread competition (http://amelia-eve.livejournal.com/76104.html). This year, as defending champion, I have got a work group that is all about the team spirit but channels it all into happy hour. Nobody can buckle down and agree on a theme that we can actually execute. I feel my crown slipping away! Come up and decorate with meeee!!!!

No, you're supposed to be dissuading me!

Your posts from last year are actually one of the big reasons I'm dreaming of making a gingerbread house this year. Between that and the encouraging when you're supposed to be discouraging, you have an awful lot to answer for, young lady.

OK, but do you have any good theme ideas that I can use? I mean, your own house is a cool theme idea, but I don't think it's going to work here. I think I have to just go stare at candy until it starts to look like something else.

:O Do you mean that Cammy's House, as a theme, will not fly in NYC? Fie on that, I say!

I don't know for themes, because I'd think you clever people have thought of everything over the years. But since y'all work in publishing, what about taking a Christmas story as your starting point? A Christmas Carol, of course, or maybe The Best Christmas Pageant Ever? I think I'd be tempted to tackle "The Little Match Girl," but that might be a little depressing for a holiday contest.

Or maybe Whoville (http://www.amazon.com/How-Grinch-Stole-Christmas-Seuss/dp/0394800796/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3_rsrsrs0)? Or A Christmas Story? Edward Gorey's Twelve Terrors of Christmas?

Or, you know, if you don't want to go for books or stories, what about New York? I bet there's lots of iconic New York Christmas imagery you can play with. Rockefeller Center, or department store windows, for example.

The trouble is that we must use the same basic house as everybody else, so making other buildings is tricky. We did not do will the year we recut it to make a gingerbread Parthenon, and the rules have since been changed to forbid it.

But I must think how I could create appropriate Whos because Whoville would kind of rock, and could be done with the basic house.

I think marshmallows might make excellent Whos. Large ones for the bodies, smll ones for the heads? Gently molded to the right shape?

Of course, you can make edible play-dough. Is that against the rules?

The only serious rule is that we have to use the provided house. And marzipan would be a form of edible play-doh, I think. Must meet with my team today!

I can't wait to hear what you come up with! :D:D:D:D:D

or wait, fondant icing! It is very moldable! *spams you*

What about a cardboard gingerbread house? It'd still be time-consuming, but corrugated cardboard is the right color for gingerbread, and you could use puff paint for the white frosting, and you could still use hard candy (or beads/other doodads) as the decorations!) And then it would last indefinitely, too.

Maybe that's too cheesy of an idea, but I've always been tempted to try it myself because my feeble attempts at gingerbread house baking have always ended in tears. At least cardboard doesn't sag when you load it down with spearmint leaves!

I remember making them with my grandmother when I was small --my part was choosing which candies went where after the thing was built -- and she always had a sturdy understructure to support the gingerbread, but yeah, thinking back, I have a lot more respect for my grandmother's gingerbread engineering than I did then.

I'm kind of tempted to make the fake gingerbread house, actually. But no! You, too, are supposed to be discouraging me, not offering me alternatives! >:O

A sturdy understructure! That must be what was missing in all of my attempts. You'd think I would've taken a cue from the graham cracker houses the kids built at school through the years, which use a half-pint milk carton as the foundation.

I think it's so cool that you got to do the gingerbread house thing with your grandmother. As someone who got into baking at an early age, I would've killed for SOMEONE in my family who was interested in it, too, especially someone with talent and finesse like your grandmother!

The people next door to us are artists, and Alice tells me that once upon a time, she and some of her sisters built an elaborate Victorian gingerbread house. I can only imagine how impressive and gorgeous it looked, but sadly, rats got to it, so I couldn't beg to see it.

I'm sorry for the alternative-offering-instead-of-dissuading! I do so like to see you build things, and I guess I just lost my reasoning for a minute there. :D

OK, OK, what if instead of a house you make some really elaborate gingerbread cookies that you can bring in to work or something? Maybe even things related to your work. You don't need cookie cutters, just make the shape out of paper and cut around it with the knife.

One year there were only four of us for Christmas dinner and I made a portrait cookie of each person to use as a place card. It was insane and difficult and fun and dammit I have no pictures. The next time I tried something like that was with

cordelia_v's kids. We took poppin' fresh cookie dough, shaped it like each person's initial, and sprinkled with colored sugar before baking. Much easier.

Gingerbread cookies. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I do have to do something for the office for Christmas.

I really enjoyed reading your entries this month.

Awww, thank you! Really, I had fun writing them too -- and it got me back into the habit of thinking of my life in terms of writing, too, which is a nice place to be.

Literature! You are, of course, a genius.

Scrooge and Marley gingerbread house!

Ha! See, I just sent you a literature suggestion, and now I see you've already gone there yourself. Scrooge and Marley gingerbread house will be so cool! Will there be meringue ghosts-of-Christmas past/present/future? :)

ZOMG!!!11! Meringue ghosts!!!11!!Eleventy11!!!! You have so nailed this. Now I just have to sell it to the team.

My life's gotten simple since.

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