Ski Condo Gingerbread

For the past few years, our Christmas vacation has included a 6 person ski vacation which requires nothing short of a 12 month planning effort to pull off. The logistics involved in getting 6 people, 10 skis, 1 snowboard, 12 boots, 12 gloves, 6 pairs of snowpants, an entire case of handwarmers and enough carbohydrate laden groceries to fuel an entire naval battalion packed and transported from Connecticut to Vermont takes about all of the energy I have. One thing that the ski trip precluded, however, was our traditional gingerbread extravaganza. So last year, along with the winter clothes packing melee, I packed up all the gingerbread paraphanalia and took it along, too.

One thing we changed, however, is the substitution of graham crackers for real gingerbread. And this small change made a world of difference in my ability to pull this off! I highly recommed it.

Here's the set up:

Note the number of candies stored in tupperware. Doing this ahead of time made the packing and clean up much quicker. Also, key to clean up was the disposable plastic tablecloth that we just wrapped up and threw away at the end of the night. It conveniently kept the rainbos sprinkles out of the carpeting.

With the artistic freedom of graham crackers (which can be broken and cut on demand, rather than gingerbread which needs to be templated and baked ahead of time), creativity ran rampant. Yes, Bruce constructed a volcano...complete with red hot spewing lava (that was made of, well, red hots...you know,the cinnamon candies?). This may be the only graham cracker volcano ever constructed:

I also packed up our icing spatulas, not wanting to rely on whatever odd and assorted cutlery we may have found in the condo kitchen. Here you see Mary, hard at work on her one storey saltbox.

And finally, here is my storybook cottage, complete with christmas lights in the hedges, a pretzel picket fence, and coconut snow in the front yard.