Two Houses

Well hello there!

Remember me? You may think that I've fallen off the planet, but in reality life just got a little too busy and I had to let something go for a while. So what's been going on? Well, I just finished another observation class where I was teaching 11th and 12th graders at a rural school. That was interesting and demanding. So yeah, I had some lesson plans and papers to write and I managed to keep the 4.0 GPA going after a successful final evaluation. (I realize grade point averages in graduate school are pretty unimportant, but I've never been a good student before and I'm pretty stoked about it.)

Also, I got a part time job at an Ostermann Jeweler's in the mall. It's got your standard baloney that goes along with a part time retail job in the mall, but for the most part I'm really enjoying it. There's some big honking blingy rings that it's fairly interesting to see who will buy them.

SO school and work, that's not too bad right? Well then we moved. This is one of the really cool things about living in a small town. We moved to the other, much nicer side of town and the only thing in our address that changed was the street name! We definitely upgraded too! I've got the library painted a lovely indigo and am still contemplating color choices for the guest room...

Yeah, that's what's been happening here. It's been pretty fun. And when I saw this month's Daring Baker challenge I decided that perhaps I'd give it a shot. After last time's disastrous results, I was curious to see if the new house had a humidity problem...

It didn't. (Sorry about the photos, my camera is in Michigan.)

Here's the fine print:

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

Except I used my own gingerbread recipe. And my house is not free standing. I am a firm believer in gluing the heck out of the house with royal icing. It is definitely all edible though. Even my naughty dog got a taste of the fence. I used the gingerbread house plans from Bob Villa too. I figure he knows how to build houses.