Christmas Eve: Gingerbread House

The day before Christmas Eve, my neighbor and friend, Sharalyn, decided we should make gingerbread houses. She started everything going and invited me over.  She found a printable stencil online and recipe. I loved making stained glass windows with hard candy.

 I had some sugar cookie dough left over from earlier in the week so we made the rest of that too.

The boys had fun frosting their own cookie.

We ran out of time to decorate. So on Christmas Eve afternoon, I assembled the house and everyone else decorated it while we watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.  My friend had a GREAT royal icing recipe. It was thick and soft and it worked perfectly and easily.

We had so much left over Halloween candy (I missed the donation date), that I didn't buy any candy to decorate the house. It was great! And it required a little more creativity, it was fun.

The Front. Dum-dums, candy necklace pieces, and bubble tape were the lamp posts, made by Jon.

 I love the skittles on the roof. It was the most traditional part of the decorating. Emily made bushes out of gumballs and jawbreakers, the chimney out of a tootsie roll log, and grass out of green jolly ranchers.

 Jon made a "snowman" out of lollipops with the sticks cut off, firewood out of almond joys, and a friendly life size slug out of billy bob gummy teeth, and candy sticks for antennae.

The boys put "gravestones" in the backyard with the candy watch/bracelet faces. And white mystery nerds were snow. Max also wanted to put that red candy on the back and a window out of candy sticks.

It was honestly the best looking gingerbread house we've made. Graham Crackers can't compare to real gingerbread! But of course, it was just for the activity-it didn't get eaten.