Gingerbread House

Last year I had these great intentions on making a gingerbread house with my kids, but I kept putting it off, and putting it off. You get the point. It ended up that Todd and my parents did the house with the kids a day or two before Christmas while I was at work. So this year, I was determined to do this with them, so we did it really early. Like the very beginning of December kind of early :) I think it turned out pretty well - take a look!

First, you start with your fake gingerbread house.  Yes, I said fake.  Ours is from The Candy Cottage.  Love it.  When you are done with it, you put it under hot water and it all washes away!

Next, you take your store-bought icing (yes, I said STORE bought) and a bunch of candy from the dollar store (or last year's Christmas candy that you shamelessly still have in your possession - it's only going to get more stale).

And you start building... I made it slightly educational and told the kids they had to make a pattern and repeat it.  Get a little math lesson in there :)

Kate was really focused for about 10 minutes.

Then Brett took over and got bossy like older siblings do.

And Kate lost interest.  And then my table looked like this for a few hours.  It's ok.

Check out the work that they did!  I did the tree (an ice cream cone and green skittles with a lemon drop on top).

Do you see the person?  The little fruit roll thing is the head and the skittles are the arms and the dots are the feet.  I'm not sure what the lemon drop is in this picture.  I'll leave that to your imagination ;)