I made the news... and gingerbread houses

I took a little break from posting this weekend. Now I have a few new things to talk about. :)

This morning, my mom wanted to go to the post office to send our Christmas packages back home. She wanted me to go with her because she had two large packages to carry and the Christmas cards to stamp and mail. When we pulled up to the parking lot, we noticed the local news station van was parked there. Of course, we thought, OH NO!! Those packages had to be mailed, though, so we went inside. There was the news reporter at the head of the counter and a camera man filming everyone who was standing in line. Talk about bad timing. I had on very little make up and my hair looked terrible. While we stood in line, the camera slowly took shots of everyone, then, we looked up, and he was standing in front of us, giving us a close-up!! I couldn't even look back up. It was too awful. When we watched the five o' clock news tonight, the story was mostly interviews that had taken place before we got there (we were so glad they didn't ask us anything) but they did show one clip of us standing in line.

As soon as we got back, my mom left to finish up her Christmas shopping and Gabrielle and I started working on our gingerbread houses. We have made one nearly every year for about four years now. We make the dough from scratch, the icing from scratch, assemble and decorate them the week before Christmas. Why we put ourselves through this, I don't know. It is one of the most nerve-wracking projects you could ever undertake. Already, the stress factor is pretty high. We had chosen one set of templates, made the dough, chilled it, rolled it out, and cut some out. The dough was sticking to everything, making a mess, and just being annoying. Nothing like that happens when the TV chefs roll out dough. I baked off one pan and Gabrielle started working on hers. After all this trouble, we discovered that the side wall wouldn't fit on our cookie sheet. We still worked with it for a long time, trying to make something work, but finally decided to just change patterns. So, after supper, we're going to have to roll out what's left of the dough and make all the pieces for the new house pattern that we can. Then tomorrow, I'm sure we'll end up making more dough to finish the house pieces with. So, now my nerves are frazzled and my back is aching. Why do I make gingerbread houses? I have no idea.