PRICELESS ARCHITECTURE
Just to show how lazy I am, here is our holiday "gingerbread house", made of snap-together plastic foam! Despite being an (occasionally) enthusiastic baker, I have never attempted to make a gingerbread house. It is just one project that lacks all appeal for me (sound the Grinch Alert), seeming both tedious in the process and precarious in the finished product. I don't at all feel negative about other people's gingerbread house projects. In fact, I applaud the creative energy and initiative of all gingerbread architects everywhere! Friends, please invite me over to ooh and aah in the presence of your culinary masterwork, which I will do with all sincerity, tinged with relief that it was you and not me who put the thing together.

Anyway, Henry just adores this little house, so much so that he recently adored it to death! I've been finding pieces of it around for days as it slowly came apart due to over-use, or misuse. He was entranced not by the house's holiday whimsy, I think, but by the corrugated texture of the faux gingersnap roofing and siding. That plus the springiness of the foam made it a big sensory hit. What was priceless about this cheap little trinket was the intense pleasure and interest Henry took in it. (While it lasted.)