Decorating gingerbread... an odyssey

Our sole accomplishment for the day? Making gingerbread cookies and decorating them. Yep. That's it. Partly this is because J. and I have been staying up far too late reading, followed by sleeping late in the morning. The whole house is sleeping late. It's lovely, but kind of messes up one's productivity. Next week, when J. is back at work and we are back to school, is going to be a great shock.

But back to the gingerbread. 

While I finally had molasses, we had run out of brown sugar, so J. walked to the store for me to pick some up. He was just going to go by himself and this would have been quick and uneventful. Instead, he ended up taking G. and L. with him because that was quieter. At the checkout in the store, the clerk, in a very friendly manner tries to talk to the girls. The girls stare. This is what the girls do when they are out in public and strangers talk to them. The staring does not often dissuade people from talking to them, though. "Are you twins?" Stare. "Are you out with your grandpa?" Ouch. (I can fully sympathize because I have been asked if I am the grandparent before as well. It's always at the grocery store for some reason.) J. informs her that he is actually the father. She then wants to continue chatting. "Are they your only children?" 

"No, actually, they are my youngest."J. replies. Since short, evasive answers never seem to shut down conversations with these types, she continues on. "Oh, how many do you have?" 

Sigh. 

It's always hard to evade a direct question, so J. replies, "Twelve." 

"TWELVE?"

"Did you say twelve?" says someone from another checkout stand, where J. realizes multiple heads have swiveled in his direction at the news. 

"Yes, twelve," he replies, "it's a lot of fun." At this point he is rescued by a friend whom he hadn't noticed previously, and begins to chat with her, thus sparing him from further inquisition.

And now, well stocked with brown sugar, we could actually make the gingerbread cookies.

Do they look a bit pale to you? They did to me when I took the first batch out of the oven. So I start going over the reasons that they could be so light compared to how a friend's cookies with the same recipe came out. I wonder if she used a different type of molasses.

Molasses. Hmmmm.... molasses.

Wait for it.

Yes, I forgot to put in the molasses when I was mixing the dough. Grumble, grumble, grumble. At least they still tasted fine, if not as fine as they would have with the molasses, and we now have cookies to decorate. Finally.

The dolls were relegated to the couch and couldn't join the decorating fun.

Mixing up the colors and putting the icing in decorating bags.

After what felt like days and days of talking about doing this, and hours and hours of getting ready to do this, we finally set about decorating cookies.

G.

K., with R. looking on.

H.

D. and Y.

L.

R.

R. really, really, really liked squeezing out the icing.

M. stopped in and decorated a cookie.

R.

D. made the Grinch

TM was playing around and discovered he was making a skeleton.

L.'s

Y.

P.

G.'s

M.'s

Notice the evolution of TM's cookie

That's a toothpick covered in frosting for the special effects.

The clean-up isn't too bad. Most of the sprinkles were contained on the trays, the icing was contained in the glasses, and the pastry bags are disposable.