The House That Josh Built

I hope everyone had a good Christmas! Josh and I spent last week in Vermont with his parents and brother's family. Josh thought it would be fun to make a gingerbread house with our two nieces, Laska (almost 13) and Larissa (5). Rather than buying a prefab kit, he decided to make it completely from scratch, so he used his mom's gingerbread recipe to make the dough.
Larissa helped him roll it out.
The next day, he made icing and assembled the house.
It was a little rustic, but held together pretty well considering we had no architectural plans to work from.
Laska helped decorate cookies made from the leftover gingerbread dough.
And then they set to work decorating the gingerbread house.
Laska went for symmetry, while Larissa focused on adding candy that could be easily pulled off and eaten later.
Josh added icing icicles and marshmallow smoke coming out of the chimney.
I added a few final touches, but the credit all goes to Josh, Laska, and Larissa for this sugary masterpiece, which made a lovely centerpiece for Christmas dinner the next day.
We gave the house a 'green' certification, since it is made entirely from consumable materials.

Professional Photo Tour

I've finally added the rest of the professional house photos to the post I started back in October. You can see them all here. It doesn't show every single room in the house, but it should give you a good overview if you don't want to wade through the whole blog looking for "after" photos.

Happy Holidays!

Nothing new to report. Just thought I'd share a photo of our Christmas tree for those of you in need of a blog fix.

Let It Snow!

We got our first snow of the season today!
It was a wet, sticky snow that weighed down tree branches and (unfortunately) made good snowballs. Josh and I took a walk around the neighborhood this afternoon and saw several snowpeople standing sentry in various front yards. Two days ago, it was sunny and 65 degrees here, but now that it's snowing we can officially get into the holiday spirit. In fact, we are going to the Washington Men's Camerata's annual Christmas concert this evening. Our friend Rob H. (not the contractor), sings with this group, so it's a holiday tradition to go to the concert and then adjourn to our friends Scott & Paige's house for cookies and cocoa afterwards. While the snow will make travel a bit messy, it will provide a much more appropriate atmosphere...

I'm sure my family is glad they got out of here before it snowed. My parents, sister, and aunt & uncle all flew out from California to spend Thanksgiving with us and see the new improved house. They were all here for a week, so we really put the house to the test -- not just with 5 adult house guests, but hosting Thanksgiving dinner for 11 people. The house passed with flying colors. We were able to comfortably accommodate everyone, AND Thanksgiving dinner was an all-around success! In addition to the seven of us, Josh's parents and their friends Stephen & Joan were here -- and contributed several tasty side dishes to the meal. It was quite a feast!

Here's the whole gang. Clockwise from the bottom is my sister Sonia, Joan, Stephen, Lynne (Josh's mom), Josh, Bill (Josh's dad) holding their dog Mikki, my dad, my mom, my aunt Sybil, and my uncle Bill. One of our family traditions is to do jigsaw puzzles when we gather for the holidays, so we reclaimed our old dining table (which used to belong to my grandparents) from my cousin who had borrowed it but no longer needed it. Now that everyone has gone home, we'll probably move this Formica and chrome monster down to the basement -- although it may be a good spot to wrap gifts...

Well, that's all for now. We've got to get ready for the concert, and prepare for the next wave of house guests who are arriving on Monday. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving, too...