Leaves & Gingerbread

Yesterday, our friend took our family picture for our Christmas card. She also caught Helen doing what she really wanted to do the whole time we were trying to keep her sitting still - play with the leaves. Here she is in action - -

Every Christmas the church congregation makes hundreds of gingerbread creations to display at the Kanesville Tabernacle and Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters. The theme this year is "A Christmas to Remember". Ryan and I had different interpretations of this theme. His brilliant idea was to make a gingerbread brain. As he put it, "That is where memories are made." He never actually told me 'how' were could create such a concept in gingerbread, but he still acts like I didn't take his idea seriously. My favorite idea was to make a "blizzard", because what is more memorable than spending your Christmas frozen at home under 8 feet of snow? It would have been really easy to make, too: nothing but royal frosting on a flat board and a rooftop peaking through. In the end, we compromised and created an old-fashioned gingerbread sleigh full of presents. Simple, yet elegant, is what the reviews are going to say. Ryan's favorite part of the project was buying (and sampling) many different candies and chocolates as we tried to find appropriate 'presents'. And if you look closely, you'll see that actually, none of the 3lbs of chocolate we bought made it into the sleigh. Very sneaky, Ryan.