Gingerbread Men and Women and Houses too
Who would have known… The Popcorn Factory offers more than just popcorn. In this case, it’s a dozen Gingerbread Men in a gift tin. Neat!! People will get a tin from ‘The Popcorn Factory’, open it and find 12 new little friends. They are the ‘simple’ type of Gingerbread Man without all of the Mr. Hollywood precision detail.
Sometimes you will find Gingerbread Men and Houses where you weren’t looking for them. Normally, Gingerbread fun items are in with the Holiday area of stores that are general retailers or specialty stores. Who would have thought… ToysRUs?
The fun finds we had are Gingerbread Men, Women and House Stand Ups. These are not little doll size, the Gingerbread People stand 44 inches tall and the House is 60 inches tall. These are available directly from ToysRUs’s Web site. I have included links to the pages I found, not sure how long they will be good or if these are regular year round offerings.
Gingerbread Man Standees – Set of 2: The set of 2 freestanding Gingerbread Man stand at 44 inches high x 33 inches wide and are made of cardboard.
Gingerbread Man Standee (Not sure if this is the house or just a even ‘bigger’ Gingerbread Man): The Gingerbread Man stands at 60 inches tall and made cardboard. Assembly is required.
Gingerbread Wall Graphic: Decorate your walls with our Gingerbread Wall Graphic. Just peel and stick the removable decals to your wall to add some fun to your holiday party.
If you have been looking around the Internet for the last couple months for Gingerbread, you may have found a bunch of links about a new ‘android’ called “Gingerbread”. Well, we thought we should clear up what that is so you can move onto the editable type of Gingerbread Men.
Gingerbread is a new version of an operating system from Google. It is found on many cell phones these day across all of the different service providers. Think of Android like you do of Windows on your computer. The difference is that Google encourages companies to put their own ‘face’ on top of the Android operating system… that way it’s their power in the background but looks like the way Samsung or HTC wants their phone to work. There is a lot of rumors talking about a new version of Android ‘Gingerbread’ coming out soon for the little notebooks called netbooks or iPad like ‘tablet’ computers.
The big announcement yesterday was for the first cell phone to come up with the new version of the Google Android OS. It doesn’t have any ‘face’ on it so the phone works and acts just the way Google wants it to. If you want to read more about it, TrustedReviews did a post about what makes the ‘Gingerbread’ version different.
You may recognize the ‘Android’ logo:
Here is the old green ‘Android’ standing next to an editable house!
And since this version of Android is called ‘Gingerbread’, the icon has changed over at BestBuy to have a little fun of joining the two together:
December 4th this year is National Cookie Day. While most people will be eating little round cookies, some of us stick with our old favorites, the Gingerbread Man.
A question Dunkin Donuts asked this year of our fellow Gingerbread Man cookie eaters, “What do you start eating your cookie?” This question wouldn’t matter to them round cookie eaters but to us, we have that decision to make every time… Head? Arm? Leg? I’m not sure how I would answer if just asked, maybe a better test would be to just watch people. This is the second time they did a survey, with the question going out to 500 people.
From the survey, Dunkin Donuts found that 64% of the respondents start at the head!
Does this matter? According to Dr. Alan Hirsch, Neurological Director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago:
“If one chooses to bite the head first, it indicates an achievement-oriented individual, a natural leader, who won’t take no for an answer. If the initial bite is the right hand, it reflects an individual who tends to be skeptical and pessimistic, while those who initially bite the left arm have a flare for creativity and are more extroverted. Those who first choose the legs tend to be more sensitive, reveling in the company of others”
Jump on over to the Dunkin Donuts site for the full story. Towards the bottom of the article is a couple nice recipes too!
We have to admit we didn’t know about this annual event. But, some friends where buzzing through and took some pictures to let us know what we were missing. There is some real talent at Gingerbread House building in Fort Concho! Great job to all 28 house builder entries this year.
If you would like to know a bit more, there are two local TV station mentions worth a look. This one is about a San Angelo family and their yearly get together to put their contest entry together. And another TV News video on the competition… it’s great to see so many folks joining in to do a local event like this one. There was some very loving work put into so many wonderful creations.
Here is one shot from the Jackson Family… be sure to visit their site to see many more pictures they took of the houses on display.
Gingerbread Women, Men and Houses isn’t just cookie making. There are a lot of fun things the Gingerbread Fan Family can do together. There are many craft ideas online, a few even offer templates and project outlines so there is a lot less resource hunting having to be done. And, I will admit it, they usually cover up my lack of drawing ability with already laid out artwork. Whew!!
Two sites you might be interested in.
“Crafts for Kids” offers a page of fun resources, free for you to use:
Also, a resource for finding craft bits is Etsy. Usually people think of this site as having only completed work created by others. This is a link as an example to Gingerbread bottle cap art bits. You get quite a few for just a couple dollars that will take hours for your family to use as everyone creates their own favorite art.
I wish I had seen this before I did so many cookies last weekend. Instead of just an outline of a Gingerbread Man to cut cookies, these from Hammer Song cut a cute little guy that includes a little heart. What a way of saying Happy Holidays with Love!
The cutter is tin and makes a 2 inch tall, 1 1/2 inch wide little Ginberbread Man. If your not familier with Hammer Song cutters, they are hand crafted cutters designed by a couple in America. What I have loved using their cutters in the past is that the cookies look just a little different from what everyone else has so you give out unique cookies that people know you made without looking, er… homemade.
Fancy Flours is offering these cutters for sale along with instructions on how to make the perfect Gingerbread Man cookies using these cutters.
The Gingerbread Men are getting into everything these days. Now, a free iPhone game that is being talked about as a fun kids and adult game.
Think of it as a Run-Slide-Jump points game where you take your Gingerbread Man through moves to get him through his many challenges. And yes, there are ‘many’ challenges. Very much like a mini-Ray Man. Don’t expect a ‘Shrek’ level Gingerbread Man, Oven Break has a more simple view of our editable friends. You can choose the type of game from Training, Challenge, Universe Express and Christmas Mode (not currently unlockable).
This might be a game to grab now since the developer has stated that it may not be free forever.
These are about the size of most dogs, so for them, this could be a new play buddy. For larger dogs though these Plush Gingerbread Men are just right to wrestle with and play. What a great way to have more Gingerbread Men roaming the house.
They would have slipped past us since the main listing on the site was for a big bear. But this image was lower on the site so we checked out the ordering pull down and our new Gingerbread Man buddy was there. Even if you don’t have a dog, these could be fun to have standing next to a corner table. They have enough detail to be nice Gingerbread Men without having all the glitter that your four legged family member shouldn’t be chewing on. Did we mention this ‘toy’ is 15 inches tall?!
A fun find! Looking around for Gingerbread Men to put in the yard, we happened upon this bit of uniqueness. Gingerbread Men made of birdseed.
We can’t forget out little flying friends so why not have our Gingerbread Men decorating our trees and bird cages?! Of course it will be sad to see our little Gingerbread Men go, but the birds will be happy and for a while you had Gingerbread Men everywhere you look. The description says they are weather resistant so they can be used outside too. Might be fun to have these outside even if we don’t have birds looking for lunch.
