Helping my niece decorate.

I got to spend some time with my 3-year-old niece this past week. (Yay!)  She is smart, funny and tidy. So when we took on the project of making a gingerbread house, we tried to be organized and orderly.

…

Strike one.

Pretty quickly, her mom and I realized that it would have been a good idea to do a little more prep. As soon as we opened the box and read all the instructions (okay 75% of the instructions), we realized that we should have assembled the house ahead of time because the two separate construction steps called for 10-15 minutes for the icing (i.e. mortar) to set. And, that 10 – 15 minutes really could have been 45 minutes to hour. Oops! (At least the gingerbread was already baked. *smile*)

So we assembled the four walls and set a timer to wait for 15 minutes. While we waited, we distributed the decorations into different bowls. With a plan to work on puzzles for the rest of the drying time, we were good to go.

Then we added the roof and waited — you guessed it — another 15 minutes of drying time. Back to do more puzzles and we were still having a pretty fun time.

(Still … ten to fifteen minutes is an eternity to a three-year-old, even a pretty patient three-year-old like my niece.)

…

Now let me just say that when completely dry, the icing  provided in our gingerbread kit became stronger than concrete, but while moist it was … um … shall we say …. pliable.

…

So it’s been 40 minutes or so, we’ve completed 4 or 5 puzzles and we (finally!) have the walls up and the roof attached. Time to decorate!

We put our little Virgo in her painter’s smock and bring our bowls of decorations to her work table. She begins to press candies onto our gingerbread house.

This is the moment that the art we expected to make becomes the art we are actually making.

Little Bit pushes a piece of candy firmly onto the roof which causes the entire structure to shift and lean to one side. (Uh oh, strike two.)

Then one side of the roof begins to slide off the house. There’s a small outcry of alarm (from all three of us) before we leap into action. It’s okay, there’s three of us. I hold the structure in place while Mommy and Niece continue to decorate (and take some pictures!)

…

Our gingerbread house continues to … er … settle. The walls tilt inward, the roof slides off. My niece – who is neat and orderly and perhaps not so excited about getting sticky in the first place — lets out another small whimper.

Fortunately, my sister-in-law is an art teacher and I’m an improviser. *smile*

“Look!’ I say, “Our gingerbread house is like a snowman, it’s melting!” My niece looks at me suspiciously, but the whimper stops.

“We’re making art,” says her mom, “Art isn’t always about the product, it’s about the process. This process is FUN!”

And, with that, we changed a potentially disastrous project into a fun and creative process. My niece kept working until she had emptied all of the bowls (she’s a finisher, just like her auntie) and then we counted to three, let go of the structure and celebrated as it “melted.”

After all, being creative is largely about the process, not the product.

The finished “product.”

Happy Holidays!

P.S. Our plan for any future gingerbread houses — since my niece doesn’t really like sweets — is to hot glue the structure together beforehand and save the frosting for the decorating. *smile*