Gingerbread Houses Quotes

This is a dark tale. A grim tale. It's a tale from another time, a time when wolves waited for girls in the forest, beasts paced the halls of cursed castles, and witches lurked in gingerbread houses with sugar-kissed roofs. That time is long gone. But the wolves are still here and twice as clever. The beasts remain. And death still hides in a dusting of white. It's grim for any girl who loses her way. Grimmer still for a girl her loses herself. Know that it's dangerous to stray from the path. But it's far more dangerous not to.

The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside. But on the inside there is nothing—only the bare gingerbread walls. It is not a real house—not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room. That’s when the stories can move in. They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite.

Sugar, flour, and cinnamon won't make a house a home, So bake your walls of gingerbread and sweeten them with bone. Eggs and milk and whipping cream, butter in the churn, Bake our queen a castle in the hopes that she'll return.

There were doors that looked like large keyholes, others that resembled the entrances to caves, there were golden doors, some were padded and some were studded with nails, some were paper-thin and others as thick as the doors of treasure houses; there was one that looked like a giant's mouth and another that had to be opened like a drawbridge, one that suggested a big ear and one that was made of gingerbread, one that was shaped like an oven door, and one that had to be unbuttoned.

Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread.

It looks like a gingerbread house assembled by a thoroughly mad child,” Page said. He took a puff from his cigarette and stepped a few paces to the side as if to survey the house from a different angle. “I love it.

The Gingerbread House sat sullenly in the downpour.

From the time I met him, he left me little clues of a man, a trail of bread crumbs to a gingerbread cottage. Inside the cottage were peeling pictures of Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe that keep sliding to the floor because the walls were too sweet to hold the Blu-Tack. I tried to pick the posters off the floor and got so distracted, I ended up in an oven. So I climbed out of the oven and out of the house and I was saving myself, but it hurt so bad. I found the boy I loved, but he didn't want to hug me because I was blistered and spotted with bread crumbs. I looked up close because, up close, I could always see myself reflected in the surface of his shiny, iconic beauty. But suddenly he had pores, grey hairs, and chapped lips. And I couldn't see a damn thing.

As a kid, his favorite toy had been a snow globe, that held a small town of gingerbread buildings and peppermint streets. He’d wanted so badly to live there that one day he’d smashed the glass ball - only to find out that the houses were made of plaster, the candy stripes painted on.

That Jim Crow there in the window," answered the urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice, as he loitered along to school; "the one that has not a broken foot.

Gingerbread houses with gumdrops and peppermint and marshmallow snow. My stomach rumbles. Plates of cookies, cake, and fudge. Christmastime is here.

And in her long nights, in her long house of smoke and miller's stones, she baked the bread we eat in dreams, strangest loaves, her pies full of anguish and days long dead, her fairy-haunted gingerbread, her cakes wet with tears.

There's nothing more haunted than a house. Doesn't matter where, how grand, how small, made of brick, straw, stone, or gingerbread, whether perfectly cared for or blown to bits. Beings gather there. Every house is a planet, exerting gravitational pull. Every house is in a dark wood, every house has a wicked witch in it, doesn't matter if she looks like a fairy godmother...

Funny how those things felt so important then. Go and see the Christmas lights, bake and assemble the gingerbread house. And – poof. They disappear into history, causing only stress and leaving no imprint, like a footstep on sand that gets washed away too swiftly. Her entire life, she’s been so concerned with how things seem to be. Keeping up appearances. Having it all, the house with the carved pumpkin so everybody knew they’d done it. And yet. What was it all for?

He did it now, holding it up before his eyes as he had as a boy, and it did its old, old trick. Through the floating snow you could see a little gingerbread house with a path leading up to it. The gingerbread shutters were closed, but as an imaginative boy you could fancy that one of the shutters was being folded back (as indeed, one of them seemed to be folding back now) by a long white hand, and then a pallid face would be looking out at you, grinning with long teeth, inviting you into this house beyond the world in its slow and endless fantasy-land of false snow, where time was a myth. The face was looking out at him now, pallid and hungry, a face that would never look on daylight or blue skies again. It was his own face. He threw the paperweight into the corner and it shattered. He left without waiting to see what might leak out of it.

No matter how many gingerbread houses I made, it only increased my fury.

INTRODUCTION A NOTE TO ALL STORYTELLERS  Imagine a world with magic. Now imagine this place is home to everything and everyone you were told wasn’t “real.” Imagine it has fairies and witches, mermaids and unicorns, giants and dragons, and trolls and goblins. Imagine they live in places like enchanted forests, gingerbread houses, underwater kingdoms, or castles in the sky. Personally, I know such a place exists because it’s where I’m from. This magical world is not as distant as you think. In fact, you’ve been there many times before. You travel there whenever you hear the words “Once upon a time.” It’s another realm, where all your favorite fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme characters live. In your world, we call it the Land of Stories.

A small gingerbread house sat in between two large trees. White frosting covered its pointed roof, gumdrops were clumped around like shrubbery, and candy canes lined the path to the front door like a picket fence. “Look, Conner!” Alex said, catching her breath. “It’s a gingerbread house, a real gingerbread house! Look how cute it is!” “Whoa,” Conner said. “I feel like I may get diabetes from just looking at that place.

Titus, operating under the terms of the more modest package that he had negotiated with Gwen, which included room, board, and at the end of his own Candy Land path, the ambiguous pink-frosting-roofed gingerbread house of a family to love him and fuck him up, instantly got out of the car, observed the agreed-upon conventions of civilized intercourse among strangers, and got back into the car. The boy was still visiting their planet from his own faraway home world, but Archy figured that with time, he would adjust to the local gravity and microbes. Keeping close to the baby most of the time, as if Clark were the object he had crossed the stellar void to study.

I hate paperwork,” announced Andy, looking up from his desk. “How is it that we have a form for ‘you got a gingerbread house dropped on your head’? How do we have a job where that’s something you’d need a form for?” “There’s

In the UK we see the skyscraper-high bills in America as the Ghost of Christmas Future unless we fight to stop the NHS getting privatized. Politicians may act dumb, but they’re not, and we’ll be lured very stealthily into this particular gingerbread house.

Here's the plan: We do everything, all the traditions, and we do it grander than anyone ever dreamed! Here are the houselights, which will require extra generators so we don't smash the power grid, the holiday music CDs that will need waterproof outdoor concert speakers, the train set with extra boxes of tracks to connect all the rooms of the house, the toys where we forget the batteries, several gingerbread house kits we'll combine to form a mansion, DVDs of all the classic Christmas specials to run nonstop, mistletoe for all the doorways, the manger scene with a little Jesus that glows in the dark to emphasize the Holy Spirit third of the Trinity because he's the shy one who gets the least press, and all the presents we'll wrap together and give each other as Secret Santas.

The little island is dominated by a grand white house which might be showing its age but which is still striking. She used to want to live in the houses she saw pictured on chocolate box lids, cottages that were inseparable from that sweet smell, like gingerbread houses. This house looks nothing like those long-ago fairy-tale cottages, but it has the same kind of appeal. She would like to try to capture it on the page

Anything not stated explicitly in a narrative is likely to be forgotten over time. If two thousand years from now humans are cannibals who have obliterated the earth’s forests and live in houses made of gingerbread, the story of Hansel and Gretel will require footnotes.

I looked into the display window this morning. On a white marble shelf are aligned innumerable boxes, packages, cornets of silver and gold paper, rosettes, bells, flowers, hearts, and long curls of multicolored ribbon. In glass bells and dishes lie the chocolates, the pralines, Venus's nipples, truffles, mendiants, candied fruits, hazelnut clusters, chocolate seashells, candied rose petals, sugared violets... Protected from the sun by the half-blind that shields them, they gleam darkly, like sunken treasure, Aladdin's cave of sweet clichés. And in the middle she has built a magnificent centerpiece. A gingerbread house, walls of chocolate-coated pain d'épices with the detail piped on in silver and gold icing, roof tiles of florentines studded with crystallized fruits, strange vines of icing and chocolate growing up the walls, marzipan birds singing in chocolate trees... And the witch herself, dark chocolate from the top of her pointed hat to the hem of her long cloak half-astride a broomstick that is in reality a giant guimauve, the long twisted marshmallows that dangle from the stalls of sweet-vendors on carnival days...

From: Audrey Griffin To: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal Hey you! I got gingerbread houses to decorate after school. When will you be home? I want to know when to pop the roast in the oven. * From: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal To: Audrey Griffin As I said, I’m superbusy at work, so I won’t be back for dinner. But my mouth is watering just thinking about your famous roast! * From: Audrey Griffin To: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal Don’t think I can’t take a hint. How about I get in my car and deliver you a plate myself? * From: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal To: Audrey Griffin How about you don’t? Thanks, though! *

When K & I returned to the gingerbread house after taking Nana home, I was beyond exhausted. But I couldn't sleep, not for a long time. I stayed awake. Thinking of boys, of myself, & of all the intersections in between. ... Regardless, there were times when I was at least part boy. A femme boy deep down. Shy sweater fag, my cardigan on hand to comfort me in the cold world. Bookworm queer boy at heart, K told me on more than one occasion. Certain moods & I was the most enviable of drag princesses, eyelashes all a-flutter & my fingers tickling the air with each gesture. Sometimes I was full of flirtatious swagger, but that playful swag could turn fierce snarl for defense, if need be. Never, I promised myself one line I wouldn't cross, never would I be the mean kind of boy that laughed me back inside the store's red doors when I did no good at hot afternoon sour pissing contests. Of course, there were plenty of times I was such a fairy lady that I ceased to be even part boy. Yes, Rob would have accused me of bringing the communal growl down for saying I'm part boy. And pre-Stonewall dykes would have wanted to call my game. What kind of dyke was I, anyway? Good question. Simple & complicated all at once, I wasn't a pigeon to be tucked away neatly into a hole. I didn't wear a fixed category without feeling pain. I was more, or less, or something different entirely.

Read. You should read Bukowski and Ferlinghetti, read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and listen to Coltrane, Nina Simone, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Son House, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Nick Drake, Bobbie Gentry, George Jones, Jimmy Reed, Odetta, Funkadelic, and Woody Guthrie. Drive across America. Ride trains. Fly to countries beyond your comfort zone. Try different things. Join hands across the water. Different foods. New tasks. Different menus and tastes. Talk with the guy who’s working in construction on your block, who’s working on the highway you’re traveling on. Speak with your neighbors. Get to know them. Practice civil disobedience. Try new resistance. Be part of the solution, not the problem. Don’t litter the earth, it’s the only one you have, learn to love her. Care for her. Learn another language. Trust your friends with kindness. You will need them one day. You will need earth one day. Do not fear death. There are worse things than death. Do not fear the reaper. Lie in the sunshine but from time to time let the neon light your way. ZZ Top, Jefferson Airplane, Spirit. Get a haircut. Dye your hair pink or blue. Do it for you. Wear eyeliner. Your eyes are the windows to your soul. Show them off. Wear a feather in your cap. Run around like the Mad Hatter. Perhaps he had the answer. Visit the desert. Go to the zoo. Go to a county fair. Ride the Ferris wheel. Ride a horse. Pet a pig. Ride a donkey. Protest against war. Put a peace symbol on your automobile. Drive a Volkswagen. Slow down for skateboarders. They might have the answers. Eat gingerbread men. Pray to the moon and the stars. God is out there somewhere. Don’t worry. You’ll find out where soon enough. Dance. Even if you don’t know how to dance. Read The Four Agreements. Read the Bible. Read the Bhagavad Gita. Join nothing. It won’t help. No games, no church, no religion, no yellow-brick road, no way to Oz. Wear beads. Watch a caterpillar in the sun.

The Prettiest House in the County Grandma, Uncle Roy, and I were sitting around the kitchen table in the old farmhouse. We had just sampled some gingerbread, hot from the oven, and I was listening to Grandma and her brother as they talked about the farm. “The house really could stand some paint, Roy,” Grandma said. “How long since it’s been done?” Uncle Roy’s eyes twinkled as he replied. “It’s been painted since the barn has.” Grandma began to laugh, and I knew that they both had remembered something from their childhood. “Tell me!” I begged. “What happened that was funny?” “I have to get back out to work, so you’ll have to tell her, Mabel,” Uncle Roy insisted. Grandma got up to clear the table and began the story.

When Hansel and Gretel stood in the forest and saw the house in the clearing before them , the little hairs at the nape of their necks must have shivered. Their knees must have felt so weak that blinding hunger alone could have propelled them forward. No one was there warn or hold them; their parents, chastened and grieving, were far away. So they ran as fast they could to the house where a woman older than death lived, and they ignore the shivering nape hair and the softness in their knees. A grown man can also be energized by hunger, and any weakness in his knees or irregularity in his heartbeat will disappear if he thinks his hunger is about to be assuaged. Especially if the object of his craving is not gingerbread or chewy gumdrops, but gold.

My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head—useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.

The big house... reminded me of the types of structures you can still see in places like Center City: gingerbread houses, two-story affairs built back in the nineteenth century when people didn't have televisions and were forced to build interesting things out of wood. I have a theory that the outrageous fashions you see in pre-twentieth century culture came about as a result of the lack of television. I'm talking wild hats on women with lots of feathers, pelts, sequined dresses with long trains, as well as top hats on the men, with long-tailed coats. I figure that life in those days was s dull that people themselves became televisions. I'm still working on the theory. I include European royalty in this construct, but let's move on.

Now, you may have the strongest bicycle lock in the world, but that lock is only as strong as the object to which your bicycle is fastened. A thief may not have the tools or time to cut your lock, but if you lock it to a giant peppermint stick or a gingerbread house because you’re naive and you treat life like it’s a stroll through Candyland, it’s not going to matter.

He scowled at her. “What are you doing here?” She held out a plate of freshly-baked cookies. “Making a delivery before our home turns into the gingerbread house.

Hints of gingerbread scents were in the air as Chloe opened the Christmas Shop door. Shelly was no less baking in the back and Chloe was determined to help decorate the cookies. Or houses. Whichever.

eyes. “You keep clinging to details whereas the bottom line is, one move of his ass, and you went after him like fucking Hansel to lick the witch’s cunt in the gingerbread house.

You keep clinging to details whereas the bottom line is, one move of his ass, and you went after him like fucking Hansel to lick the witch’s cunt in the gingerbread house.

The Baxter house sparkled with multicolored lights and evergreen garlands draped with icicles. The piney scent of a real Christmas tree mixed with the aroma of cinnamon from the gingerbread cookies reminded me of . . . nothing. Christmas Eve was not like this in Cuba.

LEPRECHAUN GOLD; FLOOR PLANS FOR GINGERBREAD HOUSES; TALKING FISH; GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE; TIK-TOK MEN;

The Three isn’t a person, they’re a coven of witches; Glinda the Good Witch of the North, Morgan Le Fay, and the gingerbread house witch, Frau Pfefferkuchenhaus.

Only 15-20% of Rossmoor houses are “originals”—structures unchanged from their construction in the 1950s. The land is what’s valuable. People knock down the gingerbread cottages to build Mediterranean villas with no yards between them. I don’t want our family’s house to suffer that transformation.

What I’m trying to say, Ruben, is that meeting this horrible man and his horrible wife, it made me realize something. It made me realize I don’t believe in anything anymore and not just that, but I don’t care. I have no beliefs and I’m OK with it; I’m more than OK, I’m glad . . . I’m glad I’m getting older without convictions . . .” “What’s Judy always saying, and her friends? ‘It’s copacetic’?” “It’s copacetic.” She retook my arm and we walked on, a pair of sweethearts in the snow. Our block was totally socked in. Hedgerows of snow. The pearly humps of cars. We shuffled up the steps to our door, where the snow was soft and powdery and, even at the topmost step, under the overhang, calf-high. I think of it as a blessing: may you never lock your door . . . may you never have to lock your door . . . I opened the door and—resisting the impulse to sweep her up like a bride—held it open for Edith. She stepped inside. She crunched onto the mat and bent down to untie her laces but stopped and turned and clung to me. I looked over her shoulder, through the lens fog, and saw our new television cabinet tipped over face-first, its screen shattered, and the youngest Netanyahu boy curled fetal atop a mound of gingerbread house scraps and glass.

The opposite of a criminal is an Oedipal mother, which is its own type of criminal. The Oedipal mother (and fathers can play this role too, but it’s comparatively rare) says to her child, “I only live for you.” She does everything for her children. She ties their shoes, and cuts up their food, and lets them crawl into bed with her and her partner far too often. That’s a good and conflict-avoidant method for avoiding unwanted sexual attention, as well. The Oedipal mother makes a pact with herself, her children, and the devil himself. The deal is this: “Above all, never leave me. In return, I will do everything for you. As you age without maturing, you will become worthless and bitter, but you will never have to take any responsibility, and everything you do that’s wrong will always be someone else’s fault.” The children can accept or reject this—and they have some choice in the matter. The Oedipal mother is the witch in the story of Hansel and Gretel. The two children in that fairy tale have a new step-mother. She orders her husband to abandon his children in the forest, as there is a famine and she thinks they eat too much. He obeys his wife, takes his children deep into the woods and leaves them to their fate. Wandering, starving and lonely, they come across a miracle. A house. And not just any house. A candy house. A gingerbread house. A person who had not been rendered too caring, empathic, sympathetic and cooperative might be skeptical, and ask, “Is this too good to be true?” But the children are too young, and too desperate.

My mother and I lived at my grandfather’s house, a Manhasset landmark nearly as famous as Steve’s bar. People often drove by Grandpa’s and pointed, and I once heard passersby speculating that the house must suffer from some sort of “painful house disease.” What it really suffered from was comparisons. Set among Manhasset’s elegant Gingerbread Victorians and handsome Dutch Colonials, Grandpa’s dilapidated Cape Cod was doubly appalling. Grandpa claimed he couldn’t afford repairs, but the truth was, he didn’t care. With a touch of defiance and a perverse pride he called his house the Shit House, and paid no attention when the roof began to sag like a circus tent. He scarcely noticed when paint peeled away in flakes the size of playing cards. He yawned in Grandma’s face when she pointed out that the driveway had developed a jagged crack, as if lightning had struck it—and in fact lightning had. My cousins saw the lightning bolt sizzle up the driveway and just miss the breezeway. Even God, I thought, is pointing at Grandpa’s house.

the gingerbread house was a prison, not a place of safety. It was where you were fattened up for the oven by the witch so you could be eaten, like a Christmas goose.

since the accident. I don’t know what her problem was. After all, I was a “hero.” At least the newspaper said so. “Hey, Alex,” she said, twirling her ponytail with her pencil. “Oh, hi,” I stammered, looking down at my burger. “You guys sounded really great in the talent show. I didn’t know you could sing like that.” “Uhh, thanks. It must be all the practice I get with my karaoke machine.” Oh God, did I just tell her I sing karaoke? Definitely not playing it cool, I thought to myself. TJ butted in, “Yeah, Small Fry was ok, but I really carried the show with my awesome guitar solo.” He smiled proudly. “Shut up, TJ,” I said, tossing a fry at him, which hit him between the eyes. “Hey, watch it, Baker. Just because you’re a ‘hero’ doesn’t mean I won’t pummel you.” “Yeah, right,” I said, smiling. Emily laughed. “Maybe we could come over during Christmas break and check out your karaoke machine. Right, Danielle?” Danielle rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yeah, whatever.” I gulped. “Uhhh…yeah…that sounds great.” “Ok, give me your hand,” she said. “My hand,” I asked, surprised. “Yep,” she said, grabbing my wrist and opening my palm. “Here’s my number,” she said, writing the numbers 585-2281 in gold glitter pen on my palm.” I will never wash my hand again, I thought to myself. “Text me over break, ok?” she said, smiling brightly. “Yeah, sure,” I nodded, as she walked away giggling with Danielle. “Merry Christmas to me!” I whispered to TJ and Simon. “Yeah, there’s just one problem, Dufus,” TJ said. “Oh yeah, what’s that, TJ? That she didn’t give you her number?” I asked. “No, Dork. How are you going to text her if you don’t have a cell phone?” He smiled. “Oh, right,” I said, slumping down in my seat. “That could be a problem.” “You could just call her on your home phone,” Simon suggested, wiping his nose with a napkin. “Yeah, sure,” TJ chuckled. “Hi Emily, this is Alex Baker calling from the year 1984.” He held his pencil to his ear like a phone.  “Would you like to come over to play Atari? Then maybe we can solve my Rubik’s Cube while we break dance ….and listen to New Kids on the Block.” He was cracking himself up and turning bright red. “Maybe I’ll type you a love letter on my typewriter. It’s so much cooler than texting.” “Shut up, TJ,” I said, smiling. “I’m starting to remember why I didn’t like you much at the beginning of the year.” “Lighten up, Baker. I’m just bustin’ your chops. Christmas is coming. Maybe Santa will feel sorry for your dorky butt and bring you a cell phone.” Chapter 2 ePhone Denied When I got home from school that day, it was the perfect time to launch my cell phone campaign. Mom was in full Christmas mode. The house smelled like gingerbread. She had put up the tree and there were boxes of ornaments and decorations on the floor. I stepped over a wreath and walked into the kitchen. She was baking sugar cookies and dancing around the kitchen to Jingle Bell Rock with my little brother Dylan. My mom twirled Dylan around and smiled. She was wearing the Grinch apron that we had given her last Christmas. Dylan was wearing a Santa hat, a fake beard, and of course- his Batman cape. Batman Claus. “Hey Honey. How was school?” she asked, giving Dylan one more spin. “It was pretty good. We won second place in the talent show.” I held up the candy cane shaped award that Ms. Riley had given us. “Great job! You and TJ deserved it. You practiced hard and it payed off.” “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, grabbing a snicker-doodle off the counter. “And now it’s Christmas break! I bet your excited.” She took a tray of cookies out of the oven and placed

Domenico rolled his eyes. “You keep clinging to details whereas the bottom line is, one move of his ass, and you went after him like fucking Hansel to lick the witch’s cunt in the gingerbread house.” The

For Christ’s sake, the man would leave his house in the middle of the night to bring me iced gingerbread cookies and chocolate milk to satisfy my late-night pregnancy cravings. Call me day or night. I want to know everything.

Of course there’s a fire, this is the house of fire, if there wasn’t it would be like going to a gingerbread house and finding brick walls.

She has a soft spot for houses that look sensible until you get inside.

Sugar, flour, and cinnamon won’t make a house a home, So bake your walls of gingerbread and sweeten them with bone. Eggs and milk and whipping cream, butter in the churn, Bake our queen a castle in the hopes that she’ll return. —CHILDREN’S CLAPPING RHYME, CONFECTION

Whether there’s any such thing as magical mistletoe or not, maybe the only thing any of us need is to find someone who makes the world seem a little bit more magical than it did before.

The weapon’s rounds tore through it like an angry child stabbing a gingerbread house with a screwdriver.

A girl grew up in a field. Well, in a house, with her family, but the house was surrounded by stalks of wheat as tall as saplings. The girl’s earliest memories are framed in breeze-blown green and gold. Ice and moonlight, sunshine and monsoon, the wheat was there, tickling her, tipping ladybirds and other pets into her lap

Gingerbread Houses Recipe by Ava Miles’ Great-great Grandma Miles, circa 1900 Baked by Abbie Maven at Christmas Gingerbread Cream these two ingredients: 1 cup butter 1 cup sugar Add the following: ½ cup hot coffee ¾ cup molasses 5 cups flour 1 tsp. salt 1 tsp. soda ¼ tsp. nutmeg 1 ½ tsp. ginger ½ tsp. cloves Mix the ingredients. Chill for at least 1 hour. Overnight is best.  Icing 4 egg whites 5 cups sifted powdered sugar Beat the egg whites until stiff and slowly add the powdered sugar. Keep the mixture covered when not using since the icing dries quickly. House Dimensions Roll the dough onto a lightly floured surface.

Under the damp and rot, under the drains and vermin, there was something else, sweet and soft as a whisper. And what it whispered was a tale of death. Unmistakable, inescapable death.

not allow anyone else to enter. The kitchen was off limits to everyone in the household except for the three women. “Mine is ready to be put in the oven,” said Grandmother. “You are so quick,” said Aunt Andrea. “Are you sure you put all the proper ingredients in yours?” “Oh,” said Grandmother. “I am positive. I have been making gingerbread houses for many, many years.” Mom and Aunt Andrea could not argue with Grandmother on that point and they both knew they were going to have to step it up a bit to win against her. “What are you doing with the honey?” Aunt Andrea asked Mom. “Don’t you worry about that,” said Mom. “It is my special ingredient.” “I see,” said Aunt Andrea, taking the honey away from Mom when she was finished with it. “Well it is no longer a secret ingredient.

Oh, my goodness," Sylvie said with obvious delight, immediately leaning down for a closer look at the former professor's Beauty and the Beast spread. There were iced biscuits, piped well, each in the shape of an animated character. Happily chomping down on a smiling teapot, Mariana cooed, "Look at the gingerbread houses." Adam had re-created the central square of a small French-inspired town in gingerbread blocks, chocolate beams, and blown sugar fountains. He'd mechanized the latter to spill out a cascade of syrup, which fizzed like sherbet and tasted far better than Dominic had expected. Most of the sugar-craft requirements had been checked off on the cake, however, and the sculpted objects that stood atop the icing. Even for a highly skilled, trained sugar artist, it was difficult to pull off a human figure, and Adam had wisely opted for the Beast's enchanted household: the clock, the candelabra, and so on.

few years ago I visited County Galway in Ireland. I traveled through seaside towns along the rocky coast and took a boat out to the lonely Aran Islands at the mouth of Galway Bay. I loved the lush green sheep meadows of the countryside, the smell of peat fires wafting through misty rain, the cozy pubs where we had gingerbread and strong tea. Ever since that visit, I’ve loved Irish music and literature—especially the folklore of leprechauns, fairies, and legendary Irish heroes and heroines. So now I want to share Ireland with you. Get ready for a journey to the enchanted countryside of Galway, to a time a hundred and fifty years ago, when mysterious creatures still hid in the forests and hills. Be careful not to let them see you, or you might be turned into a skunk or a weasel!

Please. I did not watch three hours of gingerbread house tutorials for nothing.” “Seriously?” The awe in her voice makes my chest puff out. “Are you impressed?” “Horrified is more like it. Do you have nothing better to do with your free time?” “Not particularly, no. It was either that or start a new LEGO set, and Aiden told me we didn’t have the space for another one until he moves out.” “LEGOs?” “Yes?” I ask with a hint of apprehension. “Hm.” “Do you have something against them?” I pretend not to notice the way Aiden and Gabriela whisper to each other while I am talking. “Nope,” she says with flushed cheeks. Gabriela grins. “My sister loves building those.” Catalina’s eyes widen. “Is that right?” I smile. She tenses beside me. “Loved. As in past tense.” “What changed?” “I grew up.

Funny how those things felt so important then. Go and see the Christmas lights, bake and assemble the gingerbread house. And – poof. They disappear into history, causing only stress and leaving no imprint, like a footstep on sand that gets washed away too swiftly.

He laughs. He’s too happy. I feel like I’m going crazy, and he’s acting like this is the best moment of his life. Maybe he’s like the witch in the gingerbread house, and now that he’s gotten me to his house, he’s gonna eat me

I researched the best strategies for gingerbread house making and thought we could give it a try.