Not so bad for the first time!

Arriving at The Castle early for the volunteer's "gingerbread house workshop," I waited around in the kitchen as the directors desperately tried to figure out whether they should follow the icing/mortar recipe that called for one cup of powdered sugar and one egg white or the one for one pound of powdered sugar and three egg whites. Would that I knew which recipe my icing used! Mine was somehow one of the few houses that didn't have serious structural issues (e.g. walls caving in, roofs sliding off, and general implosions).

I must say I found my fellow gingerbread house builders quite charming. I was not entirely surprised to find myself the only twenty-something in the group, but I will admit that I didn't expect the next-youngest person to be (and I'm guessing here) a good forty years my senior. I truly enjoyed spending the afternoon with these witty women, and I do believe they were just as delighted to have such a young'un joining them for the day.