{"id":1163,"date":"2012-12-16T18:04:05","date_gmt":"2012-12-16T23:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/?p=1163"},"modified":"2012-12-16T19:13:24","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T00:13:24","slug":"christmas-is-the-bestmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/?p=1163","title":{"rendered":"Christmas is the Bestmas."},"content":{"rendered":"

Will and I did our little family Christmas celebration this weekend.\u00a0 We made gingerbread houses from scratch which was a bit of an odyssey.\u00a0 We decided to make two houses so we could each have one to decorate.\u00a0 I thought I had gotten everything we would need for our celebration on Friday, but the gingerbread calls for much more flour than I expected, so Will had to take a trip to get more.\u00a0 To be fair, we use a lot of flour, so it’s easy to get low on it without noticing.\u00a0 I had enough flour for one batch so I started on that while Will went shopping.\u00a0 Right after he got back I noticed that the recipe calls for a ridiculous amount of molasses.\u00a0 So Will went to the store a second time for more molasses.<\/p>\n

Luckily I did have enough molasses for the first batch.\u00a0 And the sticky goop takes so long to pour, Will was back before I was done.<\/p>\n

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We were lucky it wasn’t January or I would have been standing there like that all day.\u00a0 Ba dum cha!<\/p>\n

I mentioned we made the houses from scratch which requires big cookie cutters.\u00a0 You roll the dough out right on the sheet so you don’t have to move the pieces before baking.<\/p>\n

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The recipe said to bake until they were light brown, which was a little bit baffling; they’re already pretty brown.\u00a0 Turns out they lighten slightly when baked.<\/p>\n

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It’s important not to move them at all until they are cooled completely because they’re still kind of soft and breakable when they’re warm.\u00a0 We put them in the fridge.\u00a0 When they’re cooled, they make a very suitable building material.\u00a0 And by that I mean they’re hard as a rock.<\/p>\n

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We’ve got our white icing glue in a squeeze bag with interchangeable tips.\u00a0 I can’t imagine doing this without it.\u00a0 As decor we had red hots, gum drops, chocolate covered mint patties, various sprinkles, and those lovely red and white mints no one likes.\u00a0 Will begins with construction.<\/p>\n

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I wish we had taken more picture of the actual construction.\u00a0 It really worked much better than I thought it would.\u00a0 The icing is really sticky and it dries really hard.\u00a0 To put on the roof, you actually glue the two roof pieces to a piece of paper to help hold them together.\u00a0 Making them was quite a process, but I think it was worth doing.\u00a0 Maybe we’ll do it again next year.\u00a0 We could make our family do it with us when we visit?\u00a0 Will says it was fun, but he wishes the houses were edible.\u00a0 Well technically they are.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the finished products:<\/p>\n

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I like Will’s gumdrop lights.\u00a0 If you look through the window, you can see his Christmas tree.\u00a0 We tried to light them with electric tea lights, but the lights aren’t bright enough.<\/p>\n

After our gingerbread house journey, we were planning to have a nice beef roast, but we didn’t really have enough time, so we had a frozen pizza instead.\u00a0 Then we went to a show!\u00a0 We found out about it from the Lenin lighting, but then I found out a lady I work with was in it and she had a coupon code that let us get free tickets.\u00a0 And it was close enough to our house to walk.\u00a0 It was really cute.\u00a0 It was a mash up of Sleeping Beauty<\/em> and Princess and the Pea<\/em> called Sleeping Beauty and the Pea<\/em>.\u00a0 It was for kids, but there were also some jokes for the grown ups.\u00a0 For example, the fairy godmother was played by a man who felt the need to inform us that he is, indeed, a fairy.\u00a0 The prince in search of a princess had a binder full of women. *Snerk.*\u00a0 There was even a bawdy unfinished poem whose last word presumably rhymed with “duck.”<\/p>\n

There was also an audience participation element that was really fun.\u00a0 We were to boo at the villain and cheer for the hero.\u00a0 When someone said, “Oh no it’s not,” we said, “Oh yes it is!”\u00a0 We tried to warn the princess not to touch the record player.\u00a0 When there was a ghost behind the characters, we were supposed to tell them.\u00a0 The scene with the ghost was my favorite, I think.\u00a0 <\/em>I think it would have been really fun with kids. Will says the villain, who was played by the lady I know from work, reminded him of Izma from The Emperor’s New Groove.
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It is now Sunday.\u00a0 We opened presents this morning and we made pancakes.\u00a0 Later, we’ll make the roast that we planned to have yesterday and we’ll also make some gl\u00fchwein soon.\u00a0 Maybe we’ll take pictures of that.<\/p>\n

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Will and I did our little family Christmas celebration this weekend.\u00a0 We made gingerbread houses from scratch which was a bit of an odyssey.\u00a0 We decided to make two houses so we could each have one to decorate.\u00a0 I thought I had gotten everything we would need for our celebration on Friday, but the gingerbread […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1163"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1166,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163\/revisions\/1166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}