Christmas Vacation...Hurrah!

As of tomorrow, I’m officially on vacation. I’m quite excited about that. It’s nice to have time away from the office.

This week leading up to my vacation hasn’t been quite as festive as I’d have liked due to the impairment of my tastebuds and ability to smell the gingerbread/pepperminty scents of the season. However, I’m recovering my senses slowly and defeating this pesky cold.

On the plus side, I still have been able to get all my festive activities completed. I did finally build the gingerbread house, believe it or not. It actually wasn’t nearly as hard as I remember though actually a lot messier. It turns out that it’s all to do with the consistency of the icing. All these years, I’ve been making it too runny. You’d have think I’d have figured it out before this but, finally, I realized if I make the icing very thick, it sticks better and dries faster. Granted, this epiphany occurred after almost drowning in a cloud of powdered sugar. Note to readers: If you’re going to use a bowl that’s too small for all of the powdered sugar, don’t accidentally put the hand mixer on high when you first start mixing the sugar with the water. This induces a rather large cloud that is hazardous to ones breathing apparatus.

Once I got my house standing, it was a piece of cake to decorate it (pun intended). My only disappointment was that the kit only had three types of candy to decorate the house and the picture on the box showed a lot more. I tried to get creative but at some point, I had to concede, when you stick candy on a prefabricated gingerbread house, it still sort of looks like you stuck candy on the gingerbread house. In my mind, I always envision one of those beautiful, immaculate Hansel and Gretel type houses with the perfectly placed icicles, candy cane pathways and everything else you see in catalogues and magazines. In reality, it’s a slightly splotchy, drippy gingerbread house with gumdrops stuck on it. I did manage to pipe a design on the roof but it dripped a little and instead of having a perfectly symmetrical artistically swirled roof that matched on both sides, I had a bit of a Jackson Pollock thing going on.

Nevertheless, the gingerbread house stands. I was triumphant. Next year, I shall try not to suffer from Gingerbread House Amnesia and will not invest in kit. We’ll see if I remember that when I’m feeling the need to dive into Christmas.

I also got all my gifts wrapped. I managed to bake cookies although next year, I’m using a cookie press. I wanted to make these German cookies that my grandmother used to make. They’re hazelnut cookies that are piped onto baking sheets and baked. I managed to get the recipe right but the piping was not quite so successful. The dough was rather stiff and my disposable decorating bags didn’t hold up very well. I managed to get them done but I used up quite a few decorating bags as well as having to resort to cutting the corner off a Ziploc bag and using that. Next year, I think it’ll be worth using a cookie press instead.

Tomorrow, I head to my parents for a while where I’ll spend Christmas and New Years. I’m hoping it all goes smoothly. My dad has a new puppy who is rather adorable. Unfortunately, my own pups aren’t very fond of her. Sookie, especially, does not like the new puppy to come near me. I didn’t realize quite how possessive of me she was until last weekend when she got rather upset every time the new pup came near me. I’m clearly HER person. I’m hoping that since the puppy won’t be quite so new and unfamiliar that my girls will be a little more accepting this weekend. Unfortunately, you can’t lecture dogs on the spirit of Christmas because they just look up at you like you’re demented. Yes, I have tried and yes, I have firsthand knowledge of that look.

We’ll see how it all goes. Regardless, I’m ready to submit fully to the season. Since this will be the last blog until after Christmas, I’d like to wish every one of you a safe and happy Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Unfestive Dogs and Gingerbread House Amnesia

My dogs don’t seem to be quite as fond of Christmas as I am.

It started with the tree. I think my dogs wondered why their ‘mother’ was putting up a fake tree in the house and hanging things on it. They might have preferred a real tree but really, unless it had a squirrel in it, they probably wouldn’t like that either.

They didn’t like the tree going up it an activity that took up rather a lot of time in the evening which meant I wasn’t sitting on the sofa where they could cuddle up next to me. Also, the tree was DIFFERENT and, well, my dogs don’t like DIFFERENT. My dogs like their routine. This is why whenever I get home from work, it is time for a walk regardless of whether it’s bucketing down with rain or not. This is also why when they don’t get said walk due to the torrential rain, they sulk.

My dogs don’t like it when I bake. They mope if I’m in the kitchen because, again, I’m not paying any attention to them. My sense is that they seem to feel that while I am home, it is their canine right to have my full attention. When they don’t get it, they are not happy pups.

I’ve been baking quite a lot lately. Well, I’ve been in the kitchen a lot anyway, not necessarily just baking. The only time that the pups don’t seem to mind when I’m cooking is when it involves cheese. My girls love their cheese. I might have mentioned this. Rory, in particular, is rather partial to the more expensive types of cheese like parmigiano reggiano and gruyere. I know, I know…I shouldn’t give them cheese but…I do anyway. Just not that much.

They love cheese so much that they can actually tell when I’m getting my grater out of the cupboard. This may sound like I’m exaggerating but whenever I reach up to pull out the box grater, there are suddenly two pleading little dachshunds staring up at me whereas moments before, they were in the other room.

So, even though they don’t like it when I’m in the kitchen a lot, they don’t mind when it involves cheese.

However, they also don’t like it when I write Christmas cards. This is also an activity that means I’m not sitting on the couch with them. They don’t like it when I wrap gifts either. Not only am I still not cuddling with them but, also, I’m on the floor where they like to play and there’s a mess of which they don’t approve.

I have several other Christmas activities planned over the next week or two. One involves making a gingerbread house. I bought a kit because when it first becomes permissible to start diving into Christmas without seeming too premature, gingerbread houses seem like a lovely seasonal thing. I mean, gingerbread houses are a little symbol of Christmas festivity, are they not? I love gingerbread. I love houses. The combination seems pretty nifty when it comes in a neato kit with a carrying handle and you have a 50% off coupon.

The problem is that, well, they’re way better in theory than reality. Well, perhaps I should say, they’re way better in the picture on the box and in the images in your head than what generally manifests when you actually try to build one. I know that some of my readers are a lot…craftier than I am and thus may not be able to relate to the trials and tribulations of my former attempts to build gingerbread houses. However, I’ve built a few in the past. I always use kits because frankly I’m too lazy to bake them myself.

These kits usually involve making icing that theoretically should glue the house together. You have to get the icing exactly right otherwise it doesn’t work. And, actually, even if you get it right, it still doesn’t really work. I remember the time I assisted my friend’s son with his gingerbread house. My friend was also building a gingerbread construction with her other son- this was a tree that, essentially, was just a bunch of cookies stacked on top of one another. Our house, on the other hand, proved to be so problematic and the icing so un-gluelike that we literally resorted to duct tape to hold the blasted thing together while it dried. I’m not proud of this. Also, the duct tape did not work. We eventually got some semblance of a house that was standing and we covered the worst parts with lots of candy to hide the problems.

I should have learned from that experience and yet, two years later, I tried another gingerbread construction. This was a little more successful in that I eventually got the house to hold together. However, it did involve multiple dives across the counter to catch the walls as they fell and having to re-build it. Nevertheless, I did end up with a somewhat decent looking house. It just involved rather a lot of colourful adjectives every time I had to save it from collapsing.

I should have learned from THAT experience. Unfortunately, I think I simply suffer from Gingerbread House Amnesia. This is a condition that kicks in at the start of every Christmas season and manifests itself whenever I’m standing in front of a display of gingerbread houses. The amnesia causes me to say “Aw, fun!” instead of “HELL, NO!” and I end up buying a kit.

Then the kit sits in my house. One night, I will think, “time to make the house”. I’ll open the box and pull out that evil bag of icing that will be the glue. Then I’ll put the icing back in the box and put the kit away. This usually happens at least once.

I do eventually make the gingerbread house. I just haven’t done so when I’ve had the dogs. I’m hoping this effort will be slightly smoother than my last ones merely because I get a little mean and crotchety when things don’t go according to plan and I tend to yell a bit. The poor dogs have witnessed this many a time whether it involves my building IKEA furniture, laying down floor tiles, trying to decorate my clock for Christmas with a string of festive berries and knocking the clock off the wall or trying to get a picture on my wall to stay straight. I hate that I do get mean and that I shout but it’s a coping mechanism. It’s rather akin to, say, dropping a hammer on your foot and saying the f-word rather loudly. You can’t really stop it- it’s a reflex reaction. I have dropped a hammer on my foot a couple of times, in case you were wondering.

Anyway, I am eventually going to build this gingerbread house. I just don’t think it will be tonight. Tonight I will wrap more gifts which will not make my dogs happy but it might be a little safer for them than the gingerbread house.

I think they actually like it better when I watch Christmas movies because then, at least, I’m doing what they want which is staying still long enough for them to bury their cold noses in my lap and get comfortable.

It’s even better when I have cheese.

Happy Wednesday and thanks for reading!(And Happy Birthday to my lovely mum and best friend, Saz!)