gingerbread

Gail brought Noah and Lily over yesterday to help us celebrate the first day of the big kids 16 day Christmas break!!!

Gail and I decided Thursday to have a gingerbread house-making party Friday morning.
It kinda ended up lasting 7 hours!
It was just a *little* bit chaotic, but here's the thing: it was like medicine to my soul.

I have never made a gingerbread house before. I found this recipe and modified it only slightly (I didn't have enough molasses on hand, so I topped it off with honey). It was super easy to make (although I haven't tasted it yet!) and I used her measurements for the templates. I used an empty pop can carton to cut the templates. I made a standard Royal Icing to use as "mortar".

The kids each made individual houses out of graham crackers. The only thing I wish we had done differently was to have "built" their houses in advance for them. It was difficult and we ended up doing it for them, anyway, and it was hard for them to wait for the icing to set. Each kiddo had their own ziploc baggie with icing in it and did pretty well! I even let Abe in on the action... a little. I iced some of the cookies and graham cracker pieces and stuck candy on them for him to pick off and eat! Suffice it to say - the boy got an impromptu bath in the kitchen sink when he was done.

After the kids were finished, our gingerbread had cooled. The kids went off to play (Austin and Noah were outside for hours!), Abe went down for a nap and Gail and I set to work. Ashleigh kept us company as she perfected her house with a bonfire, a pond and a fence!

Gail will likely post some pretty amazing pics later. She is very "artsy" in her photography lately :) But she did teach me something new today (we have a similar camera), and here is a little sample of that...

(OK - I AM SOOOO MAD! I have been trying to upload a few pics for over 24 hours - to no avail... I will try a few more in a separate post.)