Christmas Eve

Here is Lilly after Christmas Eve Mass (Midnight Mass at 9:00 pm) wearing the dress that Grandma Q made for her. She did very well even though it was late. She told baby Jesus Happy Birthday. While we were at church, some elves visited and left her new 12 Dancing Princesses Pajamas. She is totally crazed now beside me as I type this. She is pumped about tomorrow. Hopefully, she will go to sleep.

The Finishing Touch

So now it’s decorating time! I had bought tons of candies and assorted cookies to decorate the buildings. Now of course you need frosting. The frosting is not only makes it look pretty, but it covers up all of the sugared joints between buildings. Also if you make a boo boo you can disguise it with the frosting too.




All the roofs are done in some sort of cookie shingle. The bakery has yellow and pink wafer cookies. The flower shop is tiled in chocolate dipping graham crackers. The bank is done in chocolate wafer cookies and the shop at the end is in Nilla Wafers. You’ll notice that the toyshop (the building on the far left) is not shingled in cookies, but instead is done in Necco wafers. It’s kind of my signature thing. I always manage to get some Necco wafer tiling in. I just think they are so colorful and cute.





The rest of the candy decorations consist of traditional gum drops, starlight mints, mint pillows and red hots. Also present are Christmas gobstoppers, mini M&ms, Nerds (courtesy of Lilly), Twizzlers, 2 gummy bears (again courtesy of Lilly), Peep’s Christmas trees and Christmas sprinkles. And no gingerbread house is complete without a final dusting of powdered sugar snow.







So there you have it. The “I didn’t cuss, burn myself, or drop a piece” gingerbread house of Christmas 2006. See Brian…not Amateur Hour.

Assembling the Behemoth

So the first step in assembling a gingerbread house it make sure you have all the pieces handy for each section. I put my gingerbread together with melted sugar. It is very hot and if you get it on yourself, you can’t get it off fast enough (think extreme glue gun.). Anyway, it cools fairly fast on the gingerbread and creates a very strong bond. I find though it is a little dangerous to work with (and trying at times) it is much faster going in than the icing method which takes a while to let the bonds set.

So in a matter of about an hour and a half I got the entire thing joined together. I said entire, I mean all except one side of a roof, which I somehow overlooked to make! Than goodness I saved some gingerbread dough for breakage. I used it to swiftly turn out the missing piece and make Lilly a small gingerbread house of her own to decorate because there is no way she will be touching mine.

As usually, my gingerbread house is lit (as was I in the making of it…shout out to Amy Poehler) by miniature Christmas lights. Only I forgot to get them inside until after I had the thing assemble. With a little physics fun (and Brian’s help) we got them maneuvered underneath the walls and inside the shops. What made it more difficult to get them inside right is that the shops have dividing walls in between them. But that’s what hemostats are for, right Dad.

Our First Snow

On Wednesday, a harsh winter storm moved into Wichita Falls. The temperatures dropped into the upper 20's and snow started to fall by noon on Thursday. When Pam and Lilly got home from school on Thursday, the snow was covering the ground fairly well and Lilly was ready to play. Since it was snowing, she was convinced that it was Christmas. Pam made video of Lilly explaining why it is Christmas.

Cameron Country Jazz Fusion Concert with The Byron Berline Band

In November (1st and 5th), Brian played concerts with the Cameron/Lawton Community Jazz Ensemble and The Byron Berline Band. The concert is called Country Jazz Fusion since it is a combination of a Country/Western Swing band and a Jazz Ensemble. The videos below are examples of the music from the shows. They are from the November 5th show at the Simmons Center in Duncan, Oklahoma. The first is an old Bob Wills song called "My Window Faces The South." It is a straight ahead Western Swing song. The second song is a tribute to the late Maynard Ferguson with Brian playing the trumpet solo.

The Gingerbread House Progresses

This morning I finished up the rest of the pieces for my gingerbread house including the tricky curved piece. I ended up not baking it on the candy tin. The can had an irregular bump in it (the ridge to hold the lid) and it wasn’t quite long enough to accommodate the piece itself. So when I pulled it out of the oven (and while still extremely hot) I draped over a plastic container I had and molded it to that. It turned out pretty well and it looks like it should fit.

I also put in all of the sugar windows. The sugar windows started to crystallize as I got to the last section I was working on, but it’s not like you actually need to see in the gingerbread house. Nothing going on in there. Here’s a close-up shot of one of the better windows.

So maybe this evening I will start to assemble the goliath.