Happy Birthday BittyPrincess!

6 years old, awesome! We celebrated with a girlie sleepover, a trip to Jump Gig Harbor (awesome, by the way), pizza with the 5/6yo brigade, and cupcakes not just once but twice; once with the 5/6yo crowd:



And once later with the family:



Thank you Auntie Betsy!!! This photo wins Best Present-Opening Reaction for the day:



And because (at least until she's one) no post is complete without some Chubble...it turns out Chubble LOVES having little bows stuck to her head. Like, she got mad at us if we tried to take them back.

Santa

Gingerbread House-ing

From scratch, even! We got our recipe here:

http://homecooking.about.com/od/cookierecipes/r/blcookie111.htm

I then proceeded to not really follow it; I added 8 cups of flour in the mixer and the kneaded in the final cup. I didn't pre-cook gingerbread slabs; I rolled them out on parchment paper, cut patterns, and lifted away the excess. It worked out fabulously. Except that I forgot that gingerbread takes like an hour to bake, so instead of doing one more project before bed, I wound up waking up to get the final batch out of the oven and saving the decorating for the next day.

And our house part pattern here:

http://justgingerbread.com/patterns/small1.jpg
http://justgingerbread.com/patterns/small2.jpg

All laid out, ready to bake! Extra flour courtesy of BittyPrincess, who took my advice to add a little flour if she felt like it was sticking to her hands a little too seriously.



Houses, assembled, with remarkably little drama considering there were three kids, me, and a baby at work:



Starting to decorate. Apparently this is hot work, because Boyness has no shirt on. Then again, any excuse...



Buying off Chubble midway through:



The almost-finished wreckage (it got WORSE after this, believe it or not):



YAY, gingerbread houses!!!