You may be relieved to know that Sunday night was the Christmas concert, the 400 servings of gingerbread were served, it's over, and you won't hear about it anymore.
Those cookies up there? No one believes me, but they were the easy part. I know how to make little cookies. Decorating them took all of one hour - the length of this year's "Monk" Christmas episode.
Here's how the final servings looked:
That's brown sugar whipped cream - you just use 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar and 1-1/2 teaspoons of vanilla per cup of whipping cream. I also made a large pot of orange sauce that people could add to taste.
Imagine wonderful friends covering three long tables and every kitchen counter with these bowls. At the end, there were only 7 bowls left. Rave reviews all around! Woohoo!
There were also bowls of store-bought ginger cookies and candy canes, and lots of ice water to drink. We had Christmas lights lighting the gym, and poinsettias, white cyclamen, and red dogwood twigs in the chapel. The back of our chapel opens into the gym, so that you could see five of my small Christmas trees (yes, I have five - two from the front porch, one in the entry, and two topiary versions at my mantel) decorating the tables glowing at the back of the dark gym. I love little lights so much.
And now the fun really begins...