Magnets and Gingerbread

Well, today has been quite busy. Woke up, showered, went to Memphis, which is not the same town I saw 9 months ago! Had lunch with my grandparents and aunt, went to my parents house, spent most of the rest of the day decorating a gingerbread church and fending off Kadin and Jeriah... Cause decorating an Easter church is more difficult than it might seem, and the help of an almost three year old isn't as useful as it sounds. I took some pictures that I will share with you, though there will be many more on Facebook when I return home.

Firstly, I have mentioned to a few people that my mother is a collector of things.. one of the largest being magnets... then when I mention that she had my dad metal plate the kitchen walls above the chair rail so she could put magnets on them, I get several kinds of reactions- but always a request for pictures. Today, I bring you pictures. This one is taken from the entrance to the kitchen.

Did I mention they are organized by theme? Cause they are.

See where the refrigerator meets the wall there?

Here's a look down the side!

And that's the wall next to the fridge.

She has somewhere around 4,000 magnets, she thinks...  The ones that are up aren't even nearly all of them, She tells me that all the holiday ones are put away upstairs. I so wasn't kidding about the organized by category. I've kinda forgotten how weird it is... and then someone asks me for pictures, and it feels a little bit like I grew up in Graceland and people are wanting pictures of the Jungle Room... What? You mean green shag carpeting on the ceiling isn't normal?

OK, on to the gingerbread church:

You know why we make gingerbread churches at Easter?

1) Cause we like the look of stained glass windows

Sooo pretty! Jolly Ranchers-- Much better as decoration than as a candy.

2) Christmas is already too busy to spend so much time on one project.

And when Rhonda and I decide to spend some time on a project, we really go for it... We decided to leave off one side of the roof of the church to let light in for the windows... but that meant we needed something to go inside... AKA congregants for the church. Luckily, the bear families were willing to come. We are especially proud of our multi-racial family, seen above. :)

Yes, that's a bear preacher... and a bear playing the piano off to the side. No one gets into a project the way those girls formerly known as Miller do!

And this is my saddest moment... You see I had great hopes to make a huge tree for the front of the church... a huge tree that was 3 dimensional and stood up by itself.. It would have been really flippin' cool...But the tree just couldn't take it and cracked under pressure... Mom says we needed to bake the gingerbread longer, or it was too humid today. Considering we had a massive rainstorm, I'm going to say it was the humidity that done her in. Also pictured: dishwasher detergent and my toes.

You notice there are no pictures of the finished product? This is because it's not technically done. The roof needed some drying out time, and we ran out of royal icing, and didn't want to make more... Plus the kiddos were getting restless cause Rhonda and I spent all day working on this rather than solely focused on them.

So you will get finished gingerbread church pictures some other day... and as for today the only other thing I have to say is:

You see those two glorious coconut cream pies? I'm loved.