I had leftover dough from The Cliffs of Insanity. Rather than bake some mediocre cookies to distribute, I got experimental. My inspiration for this project was 2020: masks being symbolic of the year.
Like 2020, it was a failure.
I think I have done it.
I have made my gingerbread magnum opus.
I did not do it alone: Kristina helped with a good chunk of the decorating.
Pre-decoration, it looked sad:
Today’s post is going to be as stale as the gingerbread structure that I’m still working on. Ed says he enjoys my vintage posts, and I value his opinion. Except when it comes to the Avid BB7 brake calipers, which are garbage. Silly Briton is silly.
Anyway, this throwback post was written during my original Victoria days, back when I was certifiably poor, and a trip to Starbucks was considered a splurge. My then-roommate, Danica, taught me to embrace kitsch. If you don’t have the funds for tasteful décor, go big and go ugly. We had velvet paintings, an Astroturf rug and matching Astroturf topped coffee table with halved doll heads glued to the sides, a clawfoot bathtub, and a sink decorated with a hula skirt, a gold elephant clock with light-up flowers, and so on.
When Danica moved out, I took over her bedroom, which was actually a den and therefore had no closet, I found myself needing a dresser for my unmentionables. Why’d I taken over this room, then? It was large, had a fireplace, and a private balcony which was illuminated by a red lightbulb. It was my own little red light district, overlooking a tree decorated with baby doll parts.
Continue reading “January 9, 2006 Throwback blog post.”The nerdiest hobby I can think of is making your own fishing lures. How can something so redneck also be arts and craftsy? But if someone were to put a DIY lure kit in front of me, I’d probably happily participate.
I loved the sand art stand at the PNE. You’d get a clear bottle to fill with layers of differently coloured sand. When your bottle was full, you’d hand it to the carny who would then hot glue googly eyes, a golf tee on the bottleneck, and then seal the sand in with hot glue with a few feathers stuck in, transforming it into a bird.
All this is to say that I’m generally in favour of custom items.
Remember this fuckery?
Continue reading “Dyeing for a change.”At the beginning of the month, several people messaged me on Instagram to say they were looking forward to seeing what I’d make for this year’s gingerbread creation.
I was flattered. I was also looking forward to seeing how far my cookie genius would take me.
Last year’s Ambani Gingerhouse involved the brilliance of molds made out of leftover gingerbread dough to create perfectly-sized hard candy windows. It also required working in the presence of two curious cats, and with limited counter space.
It wasn’t enough to woo the judges of the online contest I entered, but when I edited last year’s post to announce my defeat, I also mentioned recruiting a friend for 2019’s project.
Tammy is someone who, like me, is delighted to go overboard on baking projects. She specializes in not being able to decide which cake to bake; instead, she bakes them all to stack atop one another. In 2017, for her boyfriend’s birthday, she served up a cake that was about a foot tall and took her well into the wee hours of the night to make. As one of the attendees at this birthday party, I got to eat this magnificent cake.
Anyway! I asked her what she had in mind for our gingerbread project.
“St. Basil’s Cathedral!”
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