In the past we have made Gingerbread houses and it has been a lot of fun. Sometimes I buy a kit, other times we use graham crackers and regular icing. This year, due to a bad experience with mice and an old gingerbread house I decided NO MORE. ...but I saw this at the store, and it was on sale, and it wasn't a gingerbread house so I bought it. Cute, right?
Now, I consider myself to be fairly competent with a pastry bag. I know my way around a kitchen. I enjoy this kind of thing and have many years as a daycare teacher (and Mom) to have a few tricks up my sleeve when it comes to building things with icing. I was feeling good going into this. I was sure that I would have to clear a place on the hutch for our cute little cookie Nativity scene.
And then I opened the box.
After at least 30 minutes of mixing the 2 separate bags of icing, and coloring them 7 different colors we were finally ready to decorate. I should have had 3 more people here helping. 7 colors, dyed, with WICKED food coloring and 3 children who suddenly seem to have very long arms.... this was not going to be good. I was constantly grabbing dishes from them "No, not yet honey. Let's leave it on the table. It's not to eat!"
Nehemiah got the hang of it pretty quick.
Hannah wanted to eat everything
Bowls of icing were flying around the table. Hannah wanted to be ON the table. Nehemiah had to be reminded not to eat the sheep. Joseph kept on asking "Is this enough? Should I do more?" I tried to get some icing in bags so we could do the eye, hair, button details, it wasn't going so well. The bags are cheap. The icing is thick. THICK. We improvised. This is what we wound up with
A Camel that had some sort of accident?
I think thats supposed to be Joseph, and I'm thinking he looks more like a scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head.
Someone vandalized our manger
And this is it. All of our Nativity pieces. It's sad. Very very sad. They look more like a Halloween set up than a birth of Jesus beautiful piece.
Here are some more pictures of our project gone bad
She ate as much icing out of the bowl as she could.
See it all over her face? I couldn't get it off! It was so crusted on there that I actually scratched her face when I tried to wipe it off! I had to soften it up first and then wipe it up.
Diving into a messy project, Joseph is a little unsure. Just to note - he was perfectly clean when he finished. The rest of us look somewhat like an Easter Egg.
So...the moral of this post? Should you find yourself shopping, and come across a nice sale item such as this. RUN!
7 comments:
WOW!!! That stuff is scary. It looks a little like they got dressed up for Halloween and went trick or treating at the Nativity. I feel bad for the camel, hopefully he will recover from his accident. Did you catch the graffiti artist yet? You might want to question the scarecrow, he looks a little shifty.
This cracked me up the entire way through. THanks for the good laugh. At least they taste good??
oh we aren't even going to try that! As soon as Joseph forgets that we made them they are straight to the trash. Honestly, they freak me out just a little bit.
good luck with them forgetting you made it. we made one a few years back and we put it out for the "birds" - LIE! the second the kids went to bed, I left the tray, a few crumbs and put the rest in the trash. "Look - the birds ate it ALL last night!"
7 colors of frosting - not a good thing. not. :)
I'm sorry... I was laughing so hard through this one.. that tears were in my eyes. It started when we got to the baby Jesus pic, and just got worse from there! Thank you for sharing...
Jen
This is hilarious! Thanks for the warning...I will NOT attempt something like this at home. :)
This is great! I think that picture of all of the pieces (from a distance) looks pretty good! I think it was brave just to attempt this one!
It was so great to see you this weekend and to meet your adorable kids!
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