Start with an onion . . .: Gingerbread Project 2019

Every year I think “This is the year I’ll make a gingerbread Who-ville.” Every year I’m wrong.

Every year Krista asks me to make a healthy project with dried fruits and nuts. Another year she doesn’t get her wish.

My Christmas baking was done early with the usual - shortbread, pecan puffs, leckerli.

Using Cammi's mom's shortbread recipe I did lazy shortbread. Instead of cutting individual shapes, I dumped all the dough into a pan and cut it into squares.

I had already created some garden gnomes from tomato cages and greenery stolen from my neighbours’ trees in the dead of night. And by dead of night I mean 4 pm. Because it’s so dark way too early at this time of year. Anyways, I was feeling like I'd already had my decorating fun.


Took about 3 hours to collect supplies and assemble. Red flannel for the hats and mitts.

However, I was reminded about Christmas being about traditions and making memories for the grandkids, etc. etc. Fine.

I started off imagining a replica of the Candyland game board would be awesome. At least until I did some preliminary drawings. Then I realized, it would be too hard for the grand-kids to help out because there were too many fidgety details. Also, I don’t like licorice or peanut brittle. Or lollipops. Or candy canes. If you’ve played the game for countless hours as I have, you’ll realize there’s not much else left to work with besides gumdrops.

Back to the drawing board. Krista had already snagged the idea of a garden, so we decided I could do a Christmas tree lot.

Amelia's is semi-organized on the left. Tegan's is super organized back right. Logan did a candy dump - I suspect he's thinking ahead and it will be harder to see if someone (like Logan) sneaks something out of his plot.

Frogs are crawling up the side. There's a garden hose on the other side.

Logan was more interested in his Pokemon cards but Amelia decorated the shed, snowmen, and a tree. She also enjoyed snacking on the decorations, which is the part of the fun. In fact I had purchased some candy only for snacking to keep our energy and spirits up. Some of it made it's way onto one of the Christmas trees.

Adorable angel with gummy bear wings and Christmas tree with teeth.

Tegan baked wild and wonderful cookies instead of a gingerbread project.

Non traditional Christmas cookies: peanut butter-paprika, ginger-rye, chocolate-tahini, and cardamom snowballs. And zebra striped shortbread because you know what's better than chocolate or shortbread? Chocolate and shortbread!

Every year there seems to be something that goes awry. This year I realized I had very little food colouring - except green. I’ve got so much green. Of course by December there's no hope of finding red food colouring in the stores. I used a toothpick to scavenge every last drop from my container for Santa’s outfit. Barely enough red for one cookie, but I did it. It’s a funny looking Santa, but what a nice shade of red.

Such as it is - here’s the big reveal for Gingerbread 2019!