Some last minute pressies for your amusement

Matt had to work today, so I had decided to make a gingerbread house from scratch with the kids. This was a recipe I had used in Australia when Oscar was little before we became gypsies, and had worked really well. I had tried to make it when we lived in Singapore, but the whole thing fell apart in the heat and humidity. The last few times we've had gingerbread houses it's been the straight out of the box type.

So Oscar and I made the gingerbread last night and put it in the fridge overnight to harden (have I mentioned that Oscar wants to be a chef and we can't keep him out of the kitchen at the moment-I LOVE it!)

Oscar and Remi made the icing (the fatal flaw in the plan me thinks), then Kit and I rolled and cut and baked the gingerbread and after an agonising wait while it cooled we all tried to assemble it to decorate it.

Talk about "dodgy brothers" house building!!! We required all sorts of scaffolding and if you look carefully that's Oscar with my hair dryer in the shadows.


That was just to erect the walls. Then we had to try and get the heavily gumdrop laden roofs to stay on. That required some sturdier supports.

But eventually the icing did set, and this is the finished product, complete with Rudolph the red nosed moose and a rather obscene angel on the roof.

And lastly for those of you who weren't fortunate enough to get one of our cheesy American christmas photo cards (I didn't order too many and ran out), here's some of the Christmas photo attempts that didn't make it. In a way I like these better as these are the real thing...what the kids are really like.

We've put the candles in paper bags out as landing lights for the reindeer, Ella's sprinkled reindeer food out in clumps so it's fair for all the reindeer...oh and some carrots. We're listening to Bing singing Christmas music, looking for the book with "the night before Christmas" in it and generally preparing for the big night.

I think now that I'm all growed up I actually prefer Christmas Eve with all it's anticipation to the actual big day itself. The kids have discussed "the plan" for tomorrow...they have to all come into our bed for cuddles when they wake up and no one is allowed downstairs to even peek at their stockings until at 7am! A rule devised by Matt to stop me waking the kids at 5 am!!!! Unfortunately Matt has caught my dreaded cold, so we will be taking it very easy, and if we can get the kids to stop fighting it will be a lovely time!!!

Merry Christmas.