Gingerbread, Icing and Sticky Messes!! Oh MY!

Finally got the MEGALOPOLIS out of the house and donated to Gettysburg Festival.  They managed to raise money, spread holiday fun and we are all winners. 

Found out making hard candy is not so bad.  Cook the crap out of sugar, water and corn syrup til 260' or so and your good. 300' is the crack house stage.  Yellow food dye looks very different from using honey instead of corn syrup for an ingredient.  Honey candy seems a bit sticky after cooling.

Then the disasters started. 

Each year of experience there is a sense of false security for the next year.  How can anything possibly go wrong next year??

After busting ridiculous amounts of gingerbread each day, dropping into bed, the sound of cracking candy windows all night long would occasionally stir us.  Not a comforting sound. 

Our 2011 version of a Christmas Crack House. 

 

 

 

I swear I could still smell gingerbread in my hair even after showering.  And no- I did not have a line of men following me at the store even though I smelled like gingerbread all the time.  Shame.

My Mom and Hubby helped for days and days. I kept running to make icing, cook forgotten or broken pieces, whip up colored icing, run, run, run, clean, clean, clean.

The tall tree was on a turntable from an old microwave.  It would turn nice and slow and worked perfectly. 

The structure represents NYC.  The four corners have typical architecture-  one brownstone, one modern, one classic church, one building with lots of mixed use.  In between those tall structures are typical city scenes.  A skating rink, steps to the church, smallish buildings that could be shops or homes.

It isn't obvious that I have a passion for architecture.