The Gingerbread Extravaganza

When my family started planning for Christmas holidays this year, the topic of gingerbread houses came up.  In the past, my dad has helped make some really cool ones, like the hobbit hole that he made with our cousins.  What started as a joke about making Lonely Mountain (clearly, there's a theme here - we're big Hobbit fans), turned into an actual plan to make Lonely Mountain and the lake and Laketown with the dwarves coming down the river in barrels.  So not just any gingerbread house, but an extravagant gingerbread scene.  It wasn't a quick process - it took the better part of a week - and there were many people involved.  In the end though, it looked pretty awesome!!!

It started off with a big tabletop and rice krispies sculpted and molded into the shape of Lonely Mountain.  Also molded out of rice krispies were the rocky hills by the mouth of the river and the head of Smaug, which was then covered in chocolate.  The lake was made out of crushed jolly ranchers, which were melted in the oven and then sealed together with extra jolly rancher powder and a propane torch.

putting Smaug onto the pipe

After that, my mother made some marshmallow fondant to cover Lonely Mountain and the hills. Then we used Rolos and more fondant to make the dwarves in the barrels.

dwarves in progress!  The one in the back has its legs sticking out

Once all of the lake pieces were sealed together, we made Hollywood glass (sugar glass) to pour on top of it to make it even and less sticky.  At first, it was glassy and reflective, but it ended up becoming super sticky later on.  Humidity maybe?  We had to be really careful while pouring out the molten sugar since it could burn us badly.  It also hardened a lot fast than we anticipated, making the spreading difficult.  The Hollywood glass also turned the lake kind of green.  Not what we were expecting!

making the Hollywood glass

Then it was time to make the gingerbread houses!  We cut out the pieces, and then they were glued together with royal icing and set aside to be decorated.

Then, I got to decorate Lonely Mountain with gold coins (butterscotch wafers sprayed with metallic paint) and decorate the arch welcoming the dwarves into Laketown.

Next came the bridge into Laketown, which would also cover the wires and the battery pack for the LED lights we were putting beneath the houses.  Once the bridge was built, we laid out the position of the houses with toothpicks and set graham crackers on top of the lights to hold them in place until the houses were finished.

Then it was time for the houses!!!  My older sister had a couple of her fellow PhD students over to help decorate, and they did a great job!  My sister's house had a deck and a hot tub out back, one of the other houses had a big face on it, and a third house had a circular window cut out with a candy man sticking out of it.  My house was the last to go on, and it had a little porch and a ladder going down to a canoe molded out of a tootsie roll.  We laid a little floating path between the houses and cut up some Swedish fish to look like they were jumping out of the lake.

This is what it looked like in the end!!!

The final touch was to make smoke come out of Smaug's mouth.  This was done with some tubing, tupperware, and dry ice.  It looked really cool!  Of course, we couldn't just leave it at that...  Since we had a filmmaker staying with us, there had to be a video!  Sadly, I missed out on this last bit of fun (and on eating the thing!) since it happened just after we left for Texas.  Overall though, it was a really fun process!  An extravaganza for sure :)

2013 Smaug from Joe Winston on Vimeo.

A New Chapter

Last semester ended in stretch of insanity.  Over the final 3 weeks of the semester, I had over 60 pages of writing to turn in, in addition to finishing up classes and 5 final exams.  Once all the school craziness had finished, we immediately began packing up our apartment and selling off all of our furniture.  Somewhere in there Christmas shopping had to happen, and we spent most of the week around Christmas at my parents' house hanging out with family and friends and building an extravagant gingerbread scene (more on that later).  We then packed the rest of our belongings into our car and my sister-in-law's car, whose husband had driven out with Jeff's other brother-in-law to help us move our things across the country.  We drove to Nashville first, stayed the night, and then drove the rest of the way the next day, arriving just outside of Dallas just in time to watch the Eagles beat the Cowboys for the divisional title.  This Eagles fan was very excited!

So why all this craziness?  When we found out last summer that my father-in-law had cancer, I decided to load up on classes so I could take my final two classes in the spring online.  This would give us the freedom to go out to Texas and spend time with Jeff's family, helping out wherever we were needed.   Thankfully, my father-in-law is doing much better now, and is c recovering from a bone marrow transplant.  A lot of things just fell into place once we decided to move forward with this plan, for instance, Jeff found a replacement at work and had several months to train him, and our lease would run out right when we were planning on leaving.  The only major thing that could derail the plan at that point was if I didn't pass all of my classes.  Taking 6 was a huge stretch for me.  My migraines got worse with all the extra work, but it somehow all got done.  My final semester of college would be two online classes, Fundamentals of Music and Introduction to American Art History.   These two classes are all that stand between me and graduation in May!

So now we're in Texas.  We don't know how long for, but right now we're just enjoying the time we have with family and settling in to a new chapter of life.  With such a small load, I have more time to do the things I enjoy, like reading books for fun and working on hand-lettering.  I'm really excited about the time I have to spend with my adorable nieces and nephews too!  I never thought I'd live in Texas, especially just outside of Dallas, but it's shaping up to be quite the adventure.

farewell to Carrboro!