good intentions

The kids convinced me that it would be easier to make a haunted gingerbread house now than a holiday gingerbread house in December.  While making no gingerbread house is easier yet, I enjoy the making as well as the eating, so I said I would.

I pulled out the mixer, set butter out to soften and began after breakfast.  We had the final baseball games of the season in the afternoon, but since the dough has to refrigerate overnight, we weren't going to do it all then anyway.

I started the butter and sugar creaming, and then dug around in the pantry for more sugar.  Fortunately we had some... but as I lifted the bag I realized (too late) that it had been sitting upside-down... but open.  Sugar, in, on and over boxes and containers and all the other items in the pantry.  But I didn't spill the whole bag!  (Stay on the happy side...)

Instead of a post about our beautiful and/or scary gingerbread house (which may yet come another day, after I buy more molasses and can finish the mixing, after I find time to bake it and whenever we find time to assemble it and decorate it) I am going to reveal my pantry to the internet world.  I guess it needed cleaning anyway- there were a lot of onion skins caught hanging in spiderwebs in there.  But no ants!  No cockroach poop!  (...always on the happy side...)

See? It could have been worse. It was on the floor of the pantry and so it didn't spill on EVERYTHING. Just lots of things.

And, I only had to wash off some of the juice bottles and some of the granola bars when the sugar got into the open box. Some of the boxes were closed still.  (Stay on the happy side of life...*)

Yes, I do have an entire case of red sauce for pasta. Trust me, it'll get used. As will the four bottles of juice and all those Triscuits.

The guilty sugar.

The whole mixer bowl was covered with plastic wrap and put in the fridge awaiting molasses and time.  It occurred to me that if we waited until after Halloween to make the haunted gingerbread house, we could use the kids' trick-or-treat candy to decorate it instead of buying candy just for it.  Just thinkin'.

My tidy and now-clean pantry. And yes, that is Halloween candy on the top shelf with the booze. But it is unopened.  Really.  (So far.)



* The song might not have been a good choice to cheer me up.  I only hummed the bit I've typed here but now I realize that it ends with "You will feel no pain as we drive you insane.  Stay on the happy side of life." and then repeats ad nauseum.  Memories of Girl Scouts.