Easy To Assemble, My Ass!

It's not even Christmas morning yet, and I'm already assembling!

I have also learned something from this most recent project. I have discovered Adam is the only System Engineer in THIS house!

He is SO his father's son! In all those 'building/construction/anything that takes a hammer' kind of ways ;-)

Earlier this week, we had our Holiday Party & Secret Santa Gift Exchange at work.

I came home with an 'Easy to Assemble' Gingerbread house.

I stole it from a co-worker during a gift exchange game. Yeah. I'm a nasty little Elf that way.

It was perfect. Adam had been asking for one of these for the past couple of weeks, everyone else seemed to be concentrating on stealing the presents that contained bottles of wine, so I zeroed in on the CANDY.

Sat afternoon, the boys, one of their friends and I began what I had thought would be a simple house construction. An afternoon of fun and creativity.

How hard could it be? The pieces are all pre-cut, they give you a mold to stick them in, icing to hold it together and decorate with, and enough candy to bring on a three day sugar buzz if consumed all at once.

A little tree here, a little man there ...

I'll admit, I'm no Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen, but I think I can handle a little Gingerbread House

Easy!

This is the type of house my ex builds our boys ... tree houses ... or is that houses in trees?

Remember, I'm just trying to get one of these babies standing!

And it was clearly labeled!

Key word here People ... EASY!

Yeah.

Not so much.

After the roof collapsed, and the sides imploded, for the SECOND time, we decided to go to Plan B, and move on to Gingerbread Slab Construction & Self Decoration.

Alec's Slab & One Legged Man

(yes, that IS the Dude from Shrek!)

Adam's Slab is under that candy somewhere ...

Alec's friend's Slab Creation

When they started decorating, I started cleaning, so I decided to hire a decorator, and asked Adam to surprise me with my slab.

For some reason, I seemed to have gotten short-changed in the icing department, compared to the others!

I suppose that's not necessarily a BAD thing ;-)

And no, they didn't sit down and eat it ALL in one sitting. Alec's friend slept over that night, and they ended up eating about half of it over the course of two full days.

The fact the house never turned out like the one in the picture didn't seem to stop them from eating it.

And we still had fun making it.

But, if I was stopped in the grocery store, and asked to give my opinion on the product? My only comment?

'Easy to Assemble, My Ass!'

But still an afternoon's worth of fun ;-)

K.