{"id":22202,"date":"2019-12-13T00:01:02","date_gmt":"2019-12-13T05:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=22202"},"modified":"2019-12-10T19:55:27","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T00:55:27","slug":"gingerbread-house-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/gingerbread-house-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Gingerbread House Fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m tired.\u00a0 Actually, my feet are killing me.\u00a0 But it was worth it.<\/p>\n

Last night (as of this writing), my library hosted 70 people in a holiday Gingerbread House decorating program.\u00a0 Obviously, our customers were excited.<\/p>\n

A word of digression before I explain how we put on this fun\u2014a concern about diversity. Our branch is in a very diverse area and, although the program had worked in the past, I was concerned.\u00a0 While we avoided religious symbols, Frosty, Rudolph, Santa, and the rest of the secular Christmas gang were represented in the candy used for decoration.\u00a0 We did have blue and white frosting available if anyone wanted to make a Hanukkah-themed house.\u00a0 Several members of our new-immigrant Southern Indian community did come and participate.\u00a0 I would think hard about your community, as there are ways to do a fun \u201chouse\u201d program that could be inclusive.<\/p>\n

We did a Halloween haunted house program this October.\u00a0 Last night, one girl decorated everything in pastels and used green icing to make grass.\u00a0 She said it was an \u201cEaster\u201d house, but I thought it could easily be a fairy garden.\u00a0 I could see a summer beach house as an option.<\/p>\n

In other words, you can tailor this program to fit your community.\u00a0 And the kids\u2014and families\u2014love it!<\/p>\n

\"\"
Some of our candy!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The base of the house is an individual serving milk carton.\u00a0 A neighboring branch serves daily lunch, so we asked them to pull aside their cartons, washed them out with hot water, let them airdry, and then taped the tops closed with book tape.\u00a0 A local school may be willing to set aside cartons for you as well.<\/p>\n

We then purchased graham crackers and divided up six squares into sandwich bags.\u00a0 Each child stuck four walls and two roof shingles on their milk carton with dollar store icing.<\/p>\n

After the house was constructed, kids approached a table full<\/em> of candy.\u00a0 Vanilla wafers and small round candies make great roof shingles.\u00a0 Square latticed pretzels make great doors and windows.\u00a0 I found gummies in the shapes of Frosty and Rudolph TV special characters at the dollar store, along with Santa and Frosty in chocolate form.\u00a0 Marshmallows and toothpicks make fun snowmen.<\/p>\n

Then we purchased four 4-pound tubs of decorating icing for piping bags.\u00a0 We left one white and then dyed the others blue, green, and red.\u00a0 Each tub yielded four piping bags.<\/p>\n

I think the pictures show some unique results.\u00a0 The families who attended had a great time.\u00a0 Clean-up was made easier by lining the tables with green butcher paper (put cleaning the piping bags was a chore).\u00a0 I look forward to decorating more houses of all kinds in the future!<\/p>\n

\"\"
Reindeer!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Lots of frosting<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This post covers the Core Competency of Programming Skills.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m tired.\u00a0 Actually, my feet are killing me.\u00a0 But it was worth it. Last night (as of this writing), my library hosted 70 people in a holiday Gingerbread House decorating program.\u00a0 Obviously, our customers were excited. A word of digression before I explain how we put on this fun\u2014a concern about diversity. Our branch is in a very diverse area and, although the program had worked in the past, I was concerned.\u00a0 While we avoided religious symbols, Frosty, Rudolph, Santa, and the rest of the secular Christmas gang were represented in the candy used for decoration.\u00a0 We did have blue and white frosting available if anyone wanted to make a Hanukkah-themed house.\u00a0 Several members of our new-immigrant Southern Indian community did come and participate.\u00a0 I would think hard about your community, as there are ways to do a fun \u201chouse\u201d program that could be inclusive. We did a Halloween haunted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":297,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1474,1],"tags":[847,1877,115],"class_list":["post-22202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-maria-trivisonno","category-uncategorized","tag-families","tag-gingerbread","tag-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/297"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}