NaNoWriMo 2018

putting this first as the AEDM post is loooooong, an epic saga of artists and the skills to execute idea to actuality.

Total words 35,589, word from Saturday 17th 1,414.  We’ll see whether or not I get any for today.  The Candy House exhausted my creativity!

AEDM day 18 – The Candy House

I saw rice crispy houses on pinterest.  We decided we could do that.  I failed to note that they are all *short and small* and we were heading to tall and large.  Could have been a fatal mistake.  The short version is that the first iteration was awesome and we were pleased and then the walls started folding in.  Off came the roof and we put some crispy shoring around the edges and a box in the middle.  Back on with the roof.  Turns out ice cream cups are light until you load them up with hard candy.  Off came the roof.  More shoring.  Failure.  Off come the roof.  The little bump up fell apart.  We cut the size shorter and filled the interior with left over rice crispy treats side to side and floor to ceiling, remade the bump up, put it all together and this morning it is still in one piece.  Go family!  3:30 p.mish. to after midnight, 2 emergency runs to the store for supplies, that collapse and then a very stubborn daughter who was having none of a candy house beating her, and then it was done, and the kitchen chaos was cleaned up and everyone could finally go to bed (they live about 6 minutes from us which is nice. Used to be over an hour before we moved).

Pictures galore for your entertainment, along with some insights.  Read on if you’d like the details.  Rita at Soul Comfort:  I think I’m rivaling your picture posts!  You are my inspiration for this post.  Love!

We begin.    Grandson made 6 trays of rice crispy treats the night before for the main foundation of the structure.  Daughter and gdaughter decided on size and measured and made the template for cutting the sides and roof.  So far everything moving right along smoothly.  I should mention we started late afternoon because daughter teaches and gdaughter takes dance on Saturdays (and one or two other days a week, they all box on Thursdays, daughter teaches K during the week, and is half-way through her doctorate with an A average and perfect score on her last almost 100 page paper) and we are an optimistic crew. Never done it before?  No problem.  We got this.

The supplies (not included are the supplies from the two emergency runs that happened later in the evening.  Daughter says that’s why suburban living is good – stores are always open)

 

Deciding on size and cutting templates.

 

Gson learned to make royal icing first, then taught gdaughter how and she made some too.  The icing is made stiff, and we used zip top bags with a corner cut out to make the application, a fresh one for each batch.  Trial and error taught us to make it *stiff*, don’t cut the hole for application until AFTER you’ve loaded the bag, rubber band the ziplock top.  This will save MUCH mess.

The best plan (we now know) is to make the foundation and let it set up.  The royal icing sets up pretty fast but if you want to go up, you need to plan a day’s drying time, I think, before you go up and then load it all up with candy.

The First iteration was tall and the staging seemed to indicate it would all go together nicely.  We made a bump up out of graham crackers to get height for our turrets.  Height was the goal. Go us!

 

 

So we finished the turrets.

and trees

 

looking good!

And we were pretty pleased with ourselves, only about 4 hours into the project.

But if you look closely at the picture with you can see the gap on the upper left. After that it was icing and crispy pieces and more icing, then taking the top off and putting more crispy treats on the sides and a box on the inside to see if it would hold up the roof.  Ultimately it did not and we disassembled the roof again, took out the box and completely filled the inside with rice crispy treats.  Meanwhile, the 2nd roof disassembly collapsed the original bump up and a new one had to be made, this one filled with graham crackers, all of which has to be nibbled down to size to gales of laughter between me and daughter and I think gdaughter thought we’d gone off the deep end.

More chewing on graham crackers to make them fit into the bump up.  More laughter.  Which was so good.  And then, approaching midnight, we were done.