We spent two weeks and two days in our “life boat,” as my husband calls it – the condo where we had to live after the wildfire from Chimney Tops engulfed our city of Gatlinburg. Even though our home has not been completely renovated after the wind and water damage, we felt it was important to move back in, so that a family who lost their home to the fire could move into our condo.
Our children decorating a gingerbread house at the condo.
This evacuation may have been a life-altering event, but we have made many great memories at this condo. One of them was decorating a gingerbread house with the kids.
A couple of years ago we got a kit which had to be assembled first, then decorated. It was – uhm – challenging and not exactly Pinterest worthy. We had fun alright, but frustration, too, as the walls of the house would not stand. That experience cured us from wanting to decorate another gingerbread house for two years.
One of the things we brought from home was our daughter’s blue stool.
Last week, we were at Walmart to pick up electrical tape for our violins (that’s another story for another time) and we saw this gingerbread house decorating kit in which the house has already been put together. All we have to do is decorate with the enclosed icing, marzipan, gum balls, and gum drops.
My son tried to pipe some icicles onto the roof of the gingerbread house. A for effort.
The kids had fun decorating and I let them do most of the work, unless they asked for help. Specifically, they asked me to show them how to pipe the icing on the roof to make it look like icicles. Well, I am no icing diva, but I read the instructions and followed them carefully and we got some icicles.
The almost final result – they kept adding details even after we declared it finished.
The result is still not Pinterest worthy, but the kids were excited and it gave us a bit of normalcy in this time of evacuations, fires, and high winds. We were displaced, but we found a way to make our temporary home feel more like a home through gingerbread house decorating, among other things. We are thankful.
