Savings, Silk Moths and Miniature Gingerbread Houses

I mentioned a while back that I was putting aside all the 20 cent pieces that came across my way.  I filled up a tin with all those 20 cent pieces, and it came to $50.  To impress my children, I stacked them in dollar piles so they could see just how much it looks like.  Pretty awesome!

At the beginning of December we had silk moths hatching.  They're so pretty after they have dried out.  This is a male moth.  They're slimmer than the females (who can hardly move because they're so full of eggs).  Silk moths don't have mouths, and therefore don't eat anything.  They have one thing on their mind, and that's to create more fertile eggs.  They have also been so inbred that there are no silk moths in the world that can actually fly.  They just flap their wings around a little and make lots of noise.

This was a week later.  More silk moths had hatched.  You can see the big female ones on the bottom of the container, and the male moths clinging more to the sides.  The little yellow 'dots' are the eggs when they are first laid.  If they are fertile, they turn black as the little silk worms start to grow inside them. 

It has been a very mild summer, so the eggs are now overdue to hatch.  I wanted to let this lot cycle through one more time, then when they started laying, I'll put the eggs in a snap lock bag and into the door of my freezer.  It freezes over in Japan (where they originate from), and so it seems like home to the silk worms.  I bring them out as soon as the buds appear on my mulberry tree.  *Fingers crossed* that this lot of eggs will actually hatch!

And how more random can you get in this post, but to include a miniature Gingerbread House :D  It's not exactly a masterpiece, but I think it's cute enough.  This was one the family got to demolish.  I have a sweet gingerbread men recipe that I use, and one year I printed out the instructions to a gingerbread house, decided not to enlarge it but create it as is by tracing out the layout onto baking paper.  It works well enough for me.

We also made one for my son's teacher.  They do make very cute gifts, placed on a silver board and wrapped in cellophane.