{"id":1159,"date":"2008-11-24T12:19:51","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T16:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forgetful.ca\/?p=1159"},"modified":"2008-11-24T12:19:51","modified_gmt":"2008-11-24T16:19:51","slug":"all-gingered-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/?p=1159","title":{"rendered":"All gingered out."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;ll spare you most of the details of my looooooooooooong &#8211; started at 5 am &#8211; Sunday.\u00a0 It was typical volunteer work: help out here, do this, run this to that person&#8230;.and it lasted all day.\u00a0 My feet were throbbing by mid-afternoon but we were told that this was the most succesful Gingerbread Event they&#8217;ve ever had.\u00a0 Whether or not they tell that to all the volunteers, I&#8217;ll never know&#8230;nor do I want to.<\/p>\n<p>Some observations from the day:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I am a kick-ass gingerbread house maker.\u00a0 Before yesterday I had never ever put one together\u00a0and mine were awesome.\u00a0 I was even asked to make replacements for the duds that made their way to the tables.\u00a0 Nice.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of the duds, I was shocked at what people considered to be decent enough to sell.\u00a0 Each house was put together (just the structure &#8211; the decorating was for the kiddos) and placed at a table where people spent $25 (yes, $25!) on a seat to sit and decorate it.\u00a0 If people are spending $25 on a gingerbread house, pay a little attention and do a good job.\u00a0 Most did not.\u00a0\u00a0 Someone even placed a house with a cracked, caved-in roof on the table to sell.\u00a0 Ya, thanks for showing up.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking again of the duds.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think it was their fault.\u00a0 They were teenagers.\u00a0 Some very young.\u00a0 It turns out that, in Ottawa, high school students are required to fulfill a volunteer hour quota to get\u00a0a course credit.\u00a0 So most of the girls there were only there because they had to be.\u00a0 And you could tell.<\/li>\n<li>Teenagers talk about ridiculous things.\u00a0 A lot.\u00a0 And loudly.<\/li>\n<li>Everyone there had seen Twilight and &#8220;LOVED IT!&#8221;\u00a0 And Robert Pattinson is &#8220;SO HOT!&#8221;\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Yesterday totally got me in the Christmas spirit.\u00a0 It sounds SO cheesy, but seeing the kids faces light up when Santa came in the room (best Santa I had ever seen, by the way), hearing the Christmas music and taking part in the decorating made me wish it was already December (my self-imposed decorating start date) and that we were already digging into our Advent calendars in anticipation.\u00a0 I love Christmas and after a very difficult fall, for so many reasons, I&#8217;m thrilled that\u00a0the\u00a0magic of the Christmas season is finally here.\u00a0 Next stop: A cruise down <a href=\"http:\/\/www.orleansonline.ca\/pages\/N2007122301.htm\">Taffy Lane<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;ll spare you most of the details of my looooooooooooong &#8211; started at 5 am &#8211; Sunday.\u00a0 It was typical volunteer work: help out here, do this, run this to that person&#8230;.and it lasted all day.\u00a0 My feet were throbbing by mid-afternoon but we were told that this was the most succesful Gingerbread Event [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[11,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}