m&m

jump-roper doubles over, swinging both hands and rope between legs.  Hands go out to the sides to allow the rope to make a full turn around the jumper, who jumps over the rope once.  Jumper exits by pulling rope out backwards, standing upright, and beginning a backwards jump.

While primarily being a jump-rope trick, m&m's also happen to be a candy!  Who knew?!?!

Also, Christmas is coming! Did you know that either?

But any-who, what's really important, and what I'm trying to get around to talking about here, is what you get when you put candy and Christmas together. Do you know what that is?

Gingerbread houses.

I love gingerbread houses.  They are the second best Christmas invention-decorations on the face of planet earth. (Of course, the nativity sets are the best Christmas decorations)

This year my loving mother let me decorate my own gingerbread house.  All.  By.  My.  Self.  I was so super-duper excited. More excited than words can even express.

Have you ever decorated a gingerbread house?  Not like the pile-on-the-candy-and-make-it-as-fast-as-possible kind of decorating.  I mean REALLY decorated one.  This means planning out each step and deliberately placing every gumdrop, m&m, licorice strand, pretzel, candy cane, marshmallow, and hard candy.  It takes patience to decorate a gingerbread house like that.  Mine, pictured below, took three hours to decorate.

Got that?  Three hours.

Front

Back

The Snowball Fort

There are many wonderful things about gingerbread houses.  First, the smell.  The molassesy-sugary-goodness makes for one of the best Christmas smells ever, right up there next to oranges, cinnamon, sugar cookies, and peppermint.

The second great part of gingerbread houses is the decorating and creativity.  I love to decorate for the holidays and to show my artistic side.  Gingerbread houses present the perfect opportunity for artistic liberties--especially in the details.  My house, for example, has four hand-crafted licorice bows; the snowman in the front yard has a modified-gumdrop face; a pile of snowballs in the fort were made from quartered mini-marshmallows; and each flower in the flower garden uses Mike-and-Ike's for the stem and leaves and a gumdrop for the petals.

Finally, each gingerbread house comes with its own epic story.  The gingerbread house below, at the Festival of Trees, was built and decorated by six women at the Utah State Prison over a period of 4 months.  They could only work on the house from 2am-6am and were only allowed to work on the house one person at a time.  They did the whole project without physically talking to or working with each other.  And the house was simply amazing. I think it's based on a lighthouse somewhere on the east coast. The detail on this thing was insane--the boat had little words piped on it with frosting and the boat dock was built from tiny pieces of gingerbread.

Some other gingerbread house stories might explain why there is an upside-down cinnamon Santa Clause in the front yard, or why there are only 6 & 3/4 reindeer pulling the sleigh.  These stories are highly entertaining and just as creative as the houses themselves.  My gingerbread house's story recounts the tale of an epic snowball fight that took place outside at the snowball fort.  As you might see, there's a snowball stuck on the wall between the windows, one on the striped corner piece, and, if you can see them, there's another three stuck to the front side of the fort.

The time spent on each gingerbread house is definitely worth it. Each of you guys should go make your own and see what amazing things you can come up with!

Oh Snap! I just realized something...

...I didn't use a single m&m on my gingerbread house.