Gingerbread Houses

At Christmas time, we each participate in a variety of traditions with our families and friends. Gingerbread is not foreign to me, but it hasn't been a yearly event. I have to admit, it really is a lot of fun! On Monday night, Kyle and Janae (who got engaged on Saturday!!!!) came over to make houses with us. Between mixing the coloring into the icing and putting on the final touches, we had a ton of fun. The boys kept punching holes into our "decorating bags" while squeezing out the icing, so we banned them for a bit. Until the red started to leak on me, and Janae pretty much split the blue bag entirely open, and then we figured, hey, it could happen to anyone! **note- don't use sandwich bags, they aren't really that dependable.** But you know, the hardest part about making gingerbread houses is NOT eating all the candy before the houses are finished. Ian kept eating the twizzler twists by the twist-ful!! Not even just a piece or two, he ate the whole thing!! haha. But as you can see, the houses turned out great.



Kyle and Janae must have dreams of their future house. You can see there is a hot tub in the back of the house with a few naked gummy bears taking a dip (Ian threw an orange M&M in and said a coi (goldfish) must have gotten inside, and Kyle threw in a brown one....eww, gross.) There are a ton of carolers singing on the front lawn, and a few lettuce heads growing on the side of the house. Also, note the gummy bears making out on the porch. Love it!




Ian and I went for a more traditional look- complete with chimney! I decided to smash the broken candy cane pieces almost to a powder and sprinkled them on the path, and it actually turned out pretty good! (Kyle asked us why we didn't have gummy bears making out in front of our house. Almost in unison, Ian and I both said "they're already married. Our bears are inside the house." Haha!) Gingerbread houses are so fun! Lets do it again next year!!