Polymer Clay, Orange Popsicles, and a Gingerbread House

This morning Josephine and I went to Michaels and got some new packages of polymer clay, so the first thing everyone wanted to do when Sunny and Ida arrived was to try it out.

Sunny made a tadpole and a heart, amongst other things.

Josephine also made a tadpole and several beads.

Ida made . . . well, you can see for yourself . . .

Next we picked oranges from the orange tree, squeezed them, and made popsicles from the juice. They were very refreshing later in the afternoon . . .

In December I optimistically bought a gingerbread house kit from Trader Joe's, but since we spent a few weeks in Sweden over Christmas, we never got a chance to build it. Things have been really crazy since then, so the kit, marked with an expiration date of August of this year, has sat unused for all this time. So today we decided to build our gingerbread house (pepparkakshus in Swedish) . . . in MAY!!! What fun!

It began with beating the egg whites for the icing.




Once the icing was finished and it was time to construct the house, Sunny announced that she had to change clothes first. I thought perhaps she wanted to change out of the bat costume and into her real clothes first, but then she emerged from the bedroom dressed from head to toe as a princess! Apparently bats make icing, but princesses build gingerbread houses.

Sunny started building the house, using the icing as glue.




Ida just wanted to eat the icing.






Jo also did her part in gluing the house together.


Here sunny is adding icing icicles as decoration.

Josephine adds icing-coated gingerbread shapes as decoration.

Now here is the point where the lovely creativity of children really takes over. Sunny then announced, once the house seemed to me to be complete, that they really needed to have cotton to use as snow. I took out a bag of polyester fiberfill, and in no time the yard was filled with very fluffy snow. Then Sunny once again announced that they needed to sprinkle sugar over the house, for more snow. I took out the confectioners sugar and a strainer, and . . .

The masterpiece:

Since it is May, and I have no desire to have a gingerbread house sitting around, I quickly gave in to their ample requests to eat the house right away. Here Ida starts with one of the figurines.

In no time the house was leveled, and three girls sat groaning on the couch, complaining that they couldn't eat another bite. The funniest part is that when you look at the remaining pieces, there doesn't seem to be much missing!