The 2016-2017 Winter Holiday Gingerbread House

The original plan was to have it finished by Christmas. Turns out it was a much bigger endeavor than anticipated, and I finally finished it on January 2nd.

The construction process:

 I got half a dozen little battery operated tea lights to put inside the house. They've now been in there for about a week and aren't flickering much, but I'm impressed they lasted as long as they did.

This was the first plan for the back of the house. It didn't survive "contact with the enemy". 

 So I redesigned things and built it in five pieces

 The windows are made of clear hard candy. I put small pieces in the window holes and it melts together in a 350F degree oven. 

 Construction complete...

 See the little lights in the windows? 

Now to the decorations

Chimney details

 Front door and rainbow path to the door (that was Twitch's idea)

 The shrubbery is rice krispies with green food color and little red hot candies. The red hot candy also appears as a door knob. 

The back of the house

Details from the back

 This is a Cheeto snowman, in mockery of our president-elect.

 And there you have it. Happy New Year! 

Superman has found a new love

To say he is enthralled may be an understatement. The man appreciates good food. He has a way with words, too. This is what he told me when he came home from the store today.

"This is the chocolate they serve in the Elysian Fields." 

"Nectar and Ambrosia aspire to taste this good." 

from the website:

Excellence Chili

This combination of fine dark chocolate with exquisite chili pepper delivers an absolutely unique taste experience. When savoring this new creation, chocolate connoisseurs will experience how the initial mild, delicate flavor of cocoa gradually gives way to a full-bodied but harmoniously spicy touch. Seductively piquant!

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but Superman is a chili-head. He loves the heat, the hotter the better. Me, not so much. My enjoyment of the hot spicy stuff comes from watching him sweat when he eats it, and making fun of him. Seriously, people, the man likes to put hot sauce on his ice cream!! Puh-leeeeze. 

This afternoon he went out to get some more gummy worms for Diva*. I asked him if he'd get a box of dark chocolate covered cherries for me, please. 

That's one of my holiday indulgences. 

When he came back he was glowing, waxing rhapsodic about this chocolate bar he'd found. He offered me a taste! Isn't that nice? I politely declined. 

Look at this picture. Doesn't it look seductive? Perhaps subliminally sexy? Whatever it is about this chocolate, Superman is in love. 

*Diva seems to prefer the gummy worms to the bears for some reason. She is recovering well. Thank you, all of you who have expressed well-wishes for her recovery. Her throat is still quite uncomfortable, but it feels much better than it did Friday. She's trying to talk although she shouldn't. Her volume is low, and that's a new experience for all of us. I like it. I wonder if it's possible to lower the volume on Sproing with anything short of surgery.