Happy Dollidays #2 – “Make Gingerbread People”

Sophie is up to something again . . . Various things are clustered around her, but she won’t let anyone see what she’s up to. Believe me, her sisters have tried.

They’re in the living room, reading by the tree and wishing they had a warm fireplace to sit by.

“Hey Soph, what are you doing over there?” Nicole asks. She’s nearing the end of her book but she doesn’t want it to end (typical Nicole, forgetting there are still three more Harry Potter books) so she keeps talking to her sisters instead.

“Nothing bad!” Sophie calls quickly.

“Oh, so you admit you are up to something?” Victoria raises her eyebrows.

“No!” Sophie says. “Well, yes, but you don’t get to know that! Not yet!”

“But you just told us!” Nicole points out.

“Ahh! Just stop askin’ me questions! You’ll find out when you find out.” She goes back to work.

“And no, camera-person, you don’t get to know either!”

Aw, man!

Sophie continues tinkering around for quite a while.

The space around her just gets messier and she won’t let anyone near.

At one point she disappears for a bit and when she comes back, she goes to the main room and twiddles her thumbs for a while. A long while, actually, so long that she gets bored and has to start twiddling in the other direction.

Then, she gets up and leaves.

“Hey, where are you going?” Victoria asks.

“Just over here, you guys can all come in a second.”

“Come for what?” Toria wonders, but gets no answer.

“Alright, I’m ready,” Sophie finally says. She sits down, the fruits of her labour spread out on the table.

“Took you long enough!” Toria says, coming running with Nicole at her heels.

“Hey! I did lots of work!”

“Oh!” Nicole gasps. “You’ve made gingerbread men!”

“No,” Sophie says proudly, “I’ve made gingerbread people. All by myself.”

And so she has. 12 neat little gingerbread people, along with five colours of icing that –

“Whoops, the icing is starting to run into each other. Quick, get decorating!” Sophie says.

Nicole passes around plates and they all help themselves to gingerbread people.

“Ah, they smell so good!” Nicole says. “I just want to eat them all right now!”

Toria shakes her head sternly. “Not until we’ve decorated them. Besides, you can’t eat a naked, face-less being!”

“Okey-dokey, Toria. But in any case, we don’t have any of those fancy icing bags, so we’ve got to use cutlery to do it.” Sophie grabs a spoon and scoops up a bit of orange icing.

“That’s alright,” Toria says. “This knife actually works pretty well.”

Nicole disagrees. “That all may be fine, but you’ve left me with the fork! What am I supposed to do with that?” She  shakes her head and goes off to find a human-sized pin, which she sticks in the leftover white icing.

“White?! ‘Cole, that’s boring!” Toria cries.

“I want a traditional one! Just one!” she protests. “I promise the other ones won’t be white!”

“Better be! I didn’t make all those colours of icing for nothing,” says Sophie.

“Look, here’s you!” Toria says, showing off her plate. “I even put you in your overalls!”

“Aww, thanks! And you made an elf too, right?”

“Yeah, and I’m going to name the elf . . . hold up, what kinds of names do elves have?”

“Um, things like Holly and Juniper and Jehosephat and Grandpa Elf!” Nicole says.

“Mmm, I think no to Grandpa Elf.” Victoria points at the gingerbread person. “There’s no beard on this one!”

“Maybe Noelle?” Sophie suggests.

“Yes, I like that! Noelle it is!”

Nicole’s decorating was going very slowly, but with the precision tool – er, the pin – it was also going very well.

“I’ve got sunsets on this gingerbread person’s legs!” Sophie exclaims.

“I’ve got one colour-sunsets?” Toria offers. “Like when the sun is just starting and isn’t really multicolour yet.”

” And I made a gingerbread boy!” Nicole says. “Only I can’t tell if he’s wearing shorts or pants.”

“Both,” Sophie decides.

“Um, okay??”

“Yes.”

Soon there’s a whole collection of gingerbread people and the icing is pretty well gone. At some point they all switch to the precision pins and Nicole even mixes up some purple because there isn’t enough of any individual colours.

Once the icing had all hardened and dried, the girls put them back on their plates and admire their work. Some of the colours blended as they dried, but most of them still look really cool.

(From left to right, here are Nicole’s, Victoria’s and Sophie’s cookies.)

They each pick a person to eat. (And . . . I’m going to let you savour that gem of a sentence before continuing on.)

“Aww, these all look so good. I can’t decide!” But Toria eventually picks a cookie decorated in all-orange.

“Sophie, these are delicious!” Nicole holds hers high in the air. “Oh, the spices are heavenly.”

“Thanks! I added extra. And hey, now we’ve only got one thing to go on our Christmas list!”

Hmm, maybe I should remind them all that the room really does need to be cleaned?

*  *  *

Anyway, for those of you looking to make gingerbread people too, these are made of brown foam and the icing is tacky glue (white glue would work too, but I used Aleene’s tacky glue because it’s thicker so puffier when dry) with food colouring mixed in. It kinda dries like that gel icing although it goes on opaque. (Nicole’s white “traditional” person, for the record, dried clear.) Be very careful with glue and dolls though!

I intended to have this up sooner, but I fell skating on Friday and now have an aircast and crutches, so that’s been fun. It’s a micro-fracture in my ankle and it’s been feeling close to normal now (honestly, it’s been healing pretty quick!), so I managed to take pictures yesterday. Getting down on the floor is the doll-space was a little awkward though . . . It’s not a big space! I should have the final “Happy Dollidays” part up before Christmas, but if not, it will be done before next year!

Alrighty, have a good winter break and I’ll talk – er, type – to you all soon!

– ForestPoodle88 and the Hedgehog Hollow Crew