One Stop for the Gingerbread Train

The gingerbread train made only one stop this year -- Sarnia! Everyone climbed aboard in Carmel's kitchen for a new version of this holiday tradition. Since Shaun and Christine and their brood were leaving to celebrate their Christmas in Costa Rica, we did an early version of the cousin Christmas which included one marathon gingerbread session.

Sara took over making the last two batches of dough the night before -- for the record we did four batches of dough -- just the right amount for all seven eager cookie makers to get their hands dirty and work some creative holiday magic.
I got this little holiday spatula for Carmel, and she also got cute gingerbread tea towels from Christine. It's all about the accessories.

I can't even tell you how rewarding it was for me to see these three "man big" boys creating their crazy fleets of dive bomber birds, ninja gingerbread guys, and other video game worthy creatures. You might think that they would be too cool for the activity but doing it together really inspired them to see which one would be the alpha baker.

Julia made a bluebird for me.

Michael and Christine show off one of the many trays that featured our handiwork.

Carmel fled to the table, away from the kitchen island

that was surrounded by icing-weilding and sparkle-dabbing kids.

Christine added a reindeer to the cookie cutter collection last year,

and Julia decided to pay homage to Rudolph.

Sara shows off her holly details.

And here I am with my Lady Macbeth impression.

thanks to the Christmas red food colouring paste we used for the icing.

To quote one of our You Tube favourite videos,

"Blood, blood. Not funny."