Thanksgiving Day!

Oh I love Thanksgiving!  I spent it with my awesome boyfriend and his amazing family!

So since I've known his family, it seems like this is their their Thanksgiving tradition:

1.  Macy's parade is on the TV, and we pay special attention to the dog show.

2.  Huge, yummy, crazy awesome, food-coma-inducing lunch:  two turkeys (one fried one roasted), mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (with the crunchy pecans and brown sugar top), ham or roast duck (sometimes both), marshmallow and mayonnaise casserole, green beans with bacon, pineapple and cheese cracker casserole, cornbread dressing, dirty rice dressing, white rolls, homemade apple pie, store bought pumpkin pie, some other homemade pie.  Did I leave anything out?  Sounds around right for six people right?

3.  Christmas decorating!  So part of this would be decorating gingerbread houses or trains.  I took over the train this year because when I am too stuffed to eat the cookies, icing, and candies, I still love playing with it!

These are the supplies Ms Sherry got us started with =) 

Yes, the gingerbread was pre-made (if you were to bake them on your own you have to ensure to bake them in advance to allow them to cool and harden prior to decorating and standing your train up.  The candy-canes were full of round and oval chocolates - which I did not end up using because they seemed bulky and heavy and I was afraid the icing would not succeed in holding them up.  But otherwise, the gingerbread train kit came with several mints, gummy candies, candy balls, and icing.  I did not personally taste any of this because I was very full already, but I was told the cookies were tasty!

The first car:

Since these are the first cars that I made, there is still some experimenting involved because its been a year since I last decorated gingerbread!  My biggest problem with these first two cars were that my hands were not quite warm enough and thus my icing was cooler than it should have been - meaning it solidifies a lot faster.  In this case, if you do not stick on your candies fast enough the icing will just crack when you place the candies on!  I  quickly learned that I have to "massage" my pouch of icing a little longer so that I have more time to decorate with candies before the icing solidifies. Of course you do not want to warm your icing up too much because if it is too runny it will not allow you to form well-defined lines.

The second car:  

The red and green backgrounds were done with the colored icing sugar crystals in the jar of icing (use a knife to spread a thin layer of icing on the gingerbread and then pat down some colored icing sugar crystals to the area).  The ornaments on the green car were merely pre-made sugar "stickers" that you can stick to your car with icing sugar.  The wheels are once again mints with a candy placed in the middle to make the axle.

The third car

The little Christmas trees on the tip-tops are one of the sprinkles that comes in the bottle of sprinkles separate from the gingerbread train kit.

The presents are once again pre-made sugar "stickers"

Its very tempting to start building the gingerbread house/train/whatever the first thing after opening the packaging but do try to refrain from sticking the sides together to stand up the cars until AFTER you have decorated each side! - Much easier this way because you can look down flat at all your sides while you decorate, and your candies won't slide down before the icing sets.  

After you do finally build the structure and stick it together, make sure you let the gingerbread structure rest in place for a while before you move it.  And If you intend on keeping your gingerbread as a decorating for more than one season (and of course if you have no intentions on eating it), then you can spray it with shellac (you can buy it from the craft store or Home Depot) so that the structure and color preserves.  Make sure you do your shellacking outdoors in a well ventilated area because that smell is not pleasant (nor is it salubrious)!

4.  The last thing in the Thanksgiving tradition: SHOPPING!!!  (on Black Friday... and that is why I did not blog about this yesterday when I actually made this!)  Hope you caught some great shopping deals!  And of course, check out my lil-shop if you like my stuff:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/HandMadeByEle