Sunday Night Supper: The Life of a Gingerbread House

Remember Christmas?  Jingle bells and candy canes?  Remember a time before this never ending winter when we thought snow was fun?  Yeah, me neither.  But we can still make the best of our world of white even as we hold our breath that spring is right around the corner.  But I digress.  I have been documenting the life of the gingerbread house, thus bringing us back to- remember Christmas?  Here it was, in all it’s glory, on Christmas Eve!  The Gingerbread house my mom, sister and Clair “built” together on a Sunday afternoon filled with holiday cheer!

The little creation, this house of candy, stuck around as decoration long after the new year.  But then what do you do with such a sentimental masterpiece?  What happens in the life of a Gingerbread house after the holidays?

Well, one idea is to introduce the ginger village to the outside world.  My mom and Clair found a spot beneath the maple tree in the front yard where they could see their home from the window.  They even placed the trees around in the snow.

I realize it is March and you will not be making a Gingerbread house for several months and therefore it is completely inappropriate of me to talk about how these were made with ice cream cones turned upside down and frosted, but you may want to adopt the method if you feed a lot of birds and want cute ice cream cone trees covered in peanut butter and bird seed.

And here is the photo I refer to as “happier days in ginger town.”

Look at their smiling little faces!  They have no idea what comes next…

The Rain, the Snow, the animals that were meant to devour this gingerbread home found it’s tasty walls and took a bite!  As I documented, it only took two weeks to go from this:

To This:

Without any sort of trail cam to catch the creatures in the act, I recreated the DURING stage.  This is how I like to imagine it all went down:

It has been a harsh winter for us homeowners.  The snow is piled high on many of our roofs and in our yards.  Even the winter wildlife has had enough.  But at least these little birds and squirrels and whoever hauled away all those little ginger people in their mouths, got a special post-holiday treat!  And the humble little life of the Gingerbread House got a small extension in our yard!

Here at our Sunday Night Suppers we are bird lovers.

And we do what we can… 🙂

Update:  For anyone concerned for the health and diet of these birds and other animals, the main food provided was the gingerbread and pretzels.  All of the frosting and candies melted when it rained.  These birds are also well fed with a daily diet of safflower seeds, peanuts and suet cakes.