Gingerbread decapitation & Cookie Cutter Ponderings

What do you do when the gingerbread people are decapitiated?

The head is stuck back on! Really, I swear. Hopefully the boys won't notice any weirdness. Besides, we're supposed to paint the things with icing.

All the online craft projects/tutorials for building gingerbread houses with your toddler or preschooler are perfect. No decapitated gingerbread people. But ours didn't turn out so perfect. And I can't imagine we're the only ones! I made gingerbread people whose heads needed help staying attached to their respective bodies, and I made rectangles of the correct dimensions for a gingerbread house. I even used the Pythagorean theorem to estimate the dimensions. Except when I tried to transfer the bastards from the oven to the cooling racks, they broke. So screw Pythagoras. His theorem doesn't hold for shit when baking to specification. Hopefully the "glue," or frosting as it were, will cover up the most egregious errors.

Notice there are 4 big gingerbread people (in varying states of decapitation and missing limbs) and 4 small gingerbread people. Hopefully 4 or one or the other -- or 2 and 2 -- will survive the decorating process  intact.

Space Travel Cookies






When choosing their implements of cookie dough destruction, my boys picked all seasonal cookie cutters except for a rocket ship and a space shuttle. I  wonder if this is some sort of future-thought since Khary has been trying to figure out how to get into space via rocket or other mechanism for years already (he's only FIVE). Khalil, following the lead, assumes he'll take a rocket ship, without question. Amidst our holiday cookies, I find it telling that they chose a space shuttle and rocket (and a crescent moon and star cookie cutters) as their must-have cookie shapes this year.

We vistited Kennedy Space Center In March of this year, and they were both mesmerized (as were their slightly geeky parents, lol). They don't even know that their holiday gifts are some things they picked out at the space center. I am kind of dumbfounded at their fascination and conviction that they'll get there. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was 6-9, but I never had that conviction. I love it.

We have a book, Bailey the Bear Cub, in which Bailey wants to reach the stars to bring them to his mama....and it's always been one of my favorites.  I hope they reach those stars.

Which reminds me...I need to get them to watch the movie Space Camp (one of my absolute favorites as a kid). Maybe that will be an additional Solstice Gift this year, on top of the warm, snuggly clothes that constitute our traditional gift.