marking Novembers by the gingerbread houses

The date on the Better Homes and Gardens Christmas Cookies gives me away.   

1993
Display until January 5 

... Make our Charming Fairy-Tale Gingerbread Cottage ...

For some reason, I picked up this magazine in the checkout at one of the Lethbridge grocery stores in our first fall living in southern Alberta, and thought to myself, "I could do this."  I think it may have sat on my shelves for a year while I gathered courage and made a plan.  and a list.  (I am not a crafty person ...)

I sent the girls off to school while my 6 month old observed the first foray into gingerbread house building.
My friend arrived around 9 in the morning, after sending the older kids off to school.  We mixed, rolled, cut, baked, re-cut, assessed building plans, assembled, dismantled, reassembled, built, salvaged, and decorated those houses, finishing them off just before midnight. 
In the midst of the general chaos, lunches were made, a few diapers changed, supper was served and family members send off to another room to leave the builders to their work.  We made our first apple cider that year as well - another recipe from the 1993 issue.

Next year, we decided, we would do the baking on a separate day, and then build them together. 
The year after that I let the girls contribute by putting the mini-wheats onto the roof. 
The year after that, they pursuaded me to bake them their own houses, forcing the project to a weekend. 

Candy, gingerbread and icing ruled the kitchen, and clean up sometimes took as long as construction.  Gradually I found myself relegated to the position of purchaser, porch-maker, chief advisor, roof caving-specialist, construction assistant and icing maker.  I didn't mind.  It was just as much fun to watch my kids build the houses as to make my own.  Usually we stuck to the pattern, although Jeana always had ambitious cottage renovations in mind, and Josie and friends loved to add creative landscaping ideas. 

The youngest was born into a home where gingerbread houses were what we did in November.  Construction had navigated quite permanently to the Remembrance Day long weekend.  Since I was perpetually involved in Christmas programs of some kind, Christmas music had already permeated the house by early November - whether it was "Go, tell it on the Mountain" for preschoolers, or the musical, "A Strange Way to Save the World"  for elementary kids.

Our move to Saskatoon brought a question to  our gingerbread habit.  Did it belong here?  Apparently it did.  There were some years that I baked up to 4 houses.  Each of the kids started with 1/2 a house (the full cottage had a double room plan, so it was easily divided)  till they could guarantee that they would stick through the construction and decoration of an entire house. 

One gingerbread builder and her husband have built their own home now, another is an engineer working on a degree in city planning, another is involved in the construction trade, and the final gingerbread builder will finish high school in another year.  18 seasons of contruction have slipped by.       

Cue the violins for the sentimental music:

mini wheats and vanilla wafer shutters

graham wafer awnings

slipping sugar cookie roofs

candy cane lamp posts, listing and falling

woodpiles and chimneys

pathways and tree cones

kids' Christmas pageants playing their soundtrack

 trails of cookie crumbs, candy and icing tracking through the years

 

That this is worthy of the supreme teen-age boy's eye-roll, I am painfully aware.  A sentimental mother who often tried to slow down the days or years finds herself a fair way down the road from 1993.  This tradition happened accidentally.  I set out to do it once, and the next year, to improve, and then the next year our kids wanted to try, and then they wanted to bring their friends along.  Every once in a while there is a lull year, where I think perhaps there will be no houses built, but as I wander down the grocery aisles I see that mini wheats are on sale, and I pick up vanilla wafers, prezels, molasses, icing sugar, lifesavers and apple juice ... just in case. 

 

Bring on the next generation of builders!