The Result (Hogwarts in Gingerbread)

DIY Hogwarts in Gingerbread

I know I'm late doing this but anyway...

Our gingerbreadhouse-projects have gone from little lavvu's to gingerbread-robots. It's come to that point where people are waiting to see what becomes of our project at Christmas-time, and this year was no different. So we figured we'd WOW them.

So we set out to make Hogwarts, from Harry Potter. Its a huge project, and one that certainly have some challenges to it; the biggest one being the Hogwarts Tower, that is the trademark Hogwarts building. Its huge. And round. And we'd have to make it in gingerbread, because we're not on Cake Boss and we don't use non-edible parts.

Day 1: Made our own blueprint and template for the buildings. Lots of studying the photos, discussing the looks and the easiest way to do things (and the prettiest) some

mathematical equations... As my mom said it; "If you're still friends after this, I'm impressed". Turns out we're a pretty impressive lot! Jerry and Lise in picture.

Day 2: Cut out the pieces. Yeah. It took a day and "some kilos" of gingerbread-dough. Which

thankfully my mom have perfected through the

years! We left them to cool off in the hallway, where we kept the hallway-window open. I was so paranoid that some hungry crows would come peck at them, but thankfully they left us alone.

Of course the pieces for the different houses are sorted on each their paper. All the long "sticks" are the towers, in varying sizes.

Day 3: Assembly time! Now this is usually where we laugh, cry and hate ourselves and each other. But it went well. It was a very long day though, I think we worked on it for about 10 hours. Jerry got the daunting task of making the peak of the Hogwarts Tower which is too big for a Ice cream-cone to fit on. But it has to be edible (even if we'd never actually eat it), else its cheating. Solution? Ice cream-cone + marshmallows and Rice Crispies, glued together with melted sugar. We then coated all the rooftops with Marzipan colored to fit the Hogwarts roofs Green-blueish color.

Day 4: Decorating! Usually we have 1-2 units to decorate, so decoration usually becomes spectacular, if I may say so myself. I was a bit worried we'd be bored and sloppy at the end of this, but we were all so invested in the project that we managed to keep it together. In spite of some problems with the piping.

Admission: We did use ONE non-edible part. A Porcelain Button my mom had lying that had a clock printed on it. We thought it fit beautifully on the clock tower.

Day 5: Making of the Figurines. Gumpaste.

Day 6: Making it all come together! Making sure the light-fixtures fit. Icing the whole board that we used as support to make it look like snow. (Cotton's too main-stream, man!)

The result...? Next blogpost, please!

Happy New Year!

Bloody hell Im bad at this blogging thing, eh? I gotta remind myself to keep writing here.

So anyway, a funny story about me and Jerry's Christmas-presents.

For a long time now, we've thought about getting a Wii. Usually we play such "serious" games as strategy, RTS, MMO's and FPS, and the Wii would be good for 3 things:

• A different, more casual type of entrainment
  
• A good console for having friends over
• The Wii Fit.

So of course I figured it'd be a perfect gift this year, and called up to Hammerfest in November to reserve a 25th Anniversary Wii. My family owns a toyshop which happens to sell Nintendo so that was only a natural thing to do. When we got up to Hammerfest for the Christmas vacation, we browsed the shop and looked at the Wii's. Jerry said "The Red one is the nicer one, isn't it?" and I agreed, now happily having it confirmed that I had made the right choice over the Black or White Wii. I couldn't wait for him to unwrap it at Christmas eve.

Pretty!

Now it belongs to the story that my family lives on top of this toyshop. The shop is on level 1-2 while their apartment is on 3rd and 4th floor, which is also where we stayed during our visit.

So one day, I believe it was the 22nd December, I'm in my pyjamas, and Jerry goes out to the minibank to get money for some reason I cannot remember. Suddenly by stepdad comes running up to the apartment SCREAMING my name, and then says that Jerry is downstairs buying me a Wii for Christmas. The Red One.

God damn man stole my Christmas-present idea! Now I had to let my stepdad pretend like nothing, because I didn't want Jerry to know that I knew what his gift was - after all the greatest thing about gifts is giving them, and I didn't want to rob him of that feeling of getting a great gift... Even if he just stole mine.

Christmas Eve came and I'm not sure I've ever seen such a crazy amount of gifts underneath the tree, especially considering that the youngest in the house is 17 soon 18. In the midst of the unwrapping mayhem I was trying to keep track of some of my presents; some of them were not to be opened until later.
And then I got my present from Jerry, and I gave him his present from me. I brought out my poker-face; weighted the box, sized it up, made a comment that these shoes were heavier then I thought they would be. And I opened it up and I had a sincere smile of glee, not because Im good at faking it, but because the moment was so precious knowing what was coming. And then he unwrapped his present from me, which was Mario Kart and Metroid Prime Triology for the Wii.

I don't think I've ever seen a man that confused before. His face had an expression I did not know existed outside comic-books.

It was precious.

We ended up with the following Wii set-up at the end:

• 25th Anniversary Edt. Wii with New Super Mario Bros, original Donkey Kong and Wii Sports.
• Metroid Prime Triology
• Black Wiimote with Wii Motion Plus + Black Nunchuck
• Mario Kart + Wheel
• Wii Fit Plus (Board and game)
• Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

Now I really gotta find a couple of the games I've been dying to try out. The latest Raving Rabbids, Epic Mickey.. Ack!

Gingerbread Mario

Me and Jerry made a Mario Gingerbreadhouse last year. Since I forgot to post it then, and this is the season to be jolly; here it is! :)

Since we didnt have any fancy color-glaze, the color is actually cake-toppings. Now, most of these cake-toppings were actually in one of them sprinkles-boxes with a multitude of colors, so first you had to separate all the colors and then put them in the right spot... we used tweezers.

Yeah, the things you do when you're at your parents house for christmas without your gaming rig, eh? :)