Cookie Monstrosity

Mana and I have apparently both been slacking on keeping this thing up to date, so I've decided to try and get at least one post done per week.

In our defense, though, with the Christmas season hurling faster and faster towards its inevitable festive climax, time around us has begun traveling so quickly that it sometimes appears as if it's going backwards!

Indeed, I feel like I must be on the verge of setting some kind of new world record of 'most Christmas activities attended in 3 weeks.' It's really a shame that there doesn't seem to be any real reward for this feat other than exhaustion.

Among the social holiday activities this week, perhaps the most memorable was a gingerbread house decorating get-together that a couple in our ward held on Monday night. The premise is exactly as it sounds, and each couple in attendance was asked to bring a gingerbread house kit of their choosing, as well as some candy to share with everyone else.

Mana chose a Disney-themed kit, that really had little to do with Disney, other than a couple of circular Winnie the Pooh cookies instead of gingerbread men. Oh, it also came with a bag purple icing in addition to the standard white.

I hate purple icing, and I will never have anything more to do with it.

Construction began on our house as a standard project. The four walls and roof would be assembled in a highly orthodox fashion, despite my suggestion of trying something more creative (read 'less utilitarian'). At first, production of the domicile appeared to be going expertly, with walls and roofs being cemented in place with expert skill and speed.

This would be Mana's first gingerbread house ever, and we were eager to outclass all the other gingerbread houses being put up around the living room. Easy as pie, we confidently believed, and immediate plans were laid to put our oh-so-rare purple icing into play.

Using the back of the box as a reference point, we determined that the entire roof would be covered in purple, with classy white borders touching up the look. Candy would then be placed in creative yet tasteful patterns, giving the house a commanding sense of style.

Initially, this plan appeared to go smoothly, until disaster struck. One of our carefully erected walls collapsed in. Panic-stricken, we attempted to restore the wall, only to learn that the icing we had used as cement was about as effective as trying to repair a broken bicycle with band-aids.

Inevitably, each wall and both halves of the roof lost their foundations, and cave-ins were frequent. The heavily coated purple roof was so slimy that it could not support the weight of even light candies, and at the end of the night, our house was a sloppy mess of purple and white goo dripping off of everything, and patterned candies sliding in whichever way gravity saw fit to pull them.

It was around this time that we noticed a set of instructions on the back of the box that we had neglected to read: let icing cement dry for at least 15 minutes before decorating, it warned.

Realizing our efforts at a classy gingerbread house were defeated, Mana, ever-cheerful, dubbed it a 'haunted' gingerbread house, giving us freedom to use its slimy, collapsing frame in whatever horrifying way we saw fit.

I'm not sure if our house was a creative disaster or accidental masterpiece, but either way, Mana's first gingerbread house will undoubtedly be one of our most memorable.

Brandon out.