Tradition: Gingerbread House & Cookie Baking

 This year, we're all trying to be healthier and "be good on our diets".   This meant that I had to scale back the goodie-making.  (Dang!!!)

Typically, I'll go bananas and make rocky road fudge, English toffee (OMG sooo good!), homemade caramels (AAAH, even better!), sugar cookies up the wazoo, white chocolate covered pretzels with sprinkles, and the list goes on!   We don't horde it.  Our friends, neighbors, family, and first responders get a large portion of it.

But, because we still have a young child in the house and he needs to have holiday FUN too (no grinches allowed in the kitchen ALL the time this Christmas!), we still needed to bake cookies and decorate the gingerbread house. 

Ramsey is in love with ginger snap cookies.  That said, making gingerbread men was the obvious choice!   We'll still make make some sugar cookies on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day (or Christmas break - who knows?!?!  My lofty ideas can sometimes pose to be "too much" and get pushed back!).

Much of the time, Ramsey was busy snarfing down gingerbread dough or licking royal icing from his fingers!  I told him he was going to get a belly ache the way he was chowing.    (He didn't, which was a near-miracle!)

After icing one or two cookies, Ramsey lost interest.  He reverted back to eating icing and dough scraps.  Who can blame him, I guess?!?

After decorating the little gingy dudes, Ramsey continued to sneak icing (the kid was seriously insane with the icing OK?!?) while helping me cut out green fondant "shingles" for the gingerbread house.   Realizing how much I actually dislike fondant (or perhaps just the tediousness of making shingles from the fondant!), we pushed on.   

We took turns.  I piped, he decorated.  :-)

Mr. Winky McWinkerton here.... ha!

Here's what we ended up with.  And uh... don't mind Ramsey's Jackson Pollock-style gingerbread man (the one that's missing its torso and head!).  Ramsey gave it to me and I couldn't stop myself; I was so hungry!

And... a sweet little photo with my partner in crime... albeit a bit scary with yours truly, sans a stitch of make-up (yikes!).