Making Gingerbread Houses

It's always fun to do some craft projects while we're visiting with family. Theresa had the brilliant idea to make gingerbread houses.

Michael's was our one-stop shop for our gingerbread kits.

We're making an entire gingerbread village, so we've got to get a lot.

We were excited to get started. Aubrey opened all the boxes, sorted the candy, and we started reading the instructions. Uh-oh. Looks like there's a minimum 24 hour wait after you put the houses together before you can decorate it... Well I guess we're just assembling houses tonight.

The main chateau of our gingerbread village. If it doesn't look as good as the box, we should return it to Michael's for a refund. 

T and Aubrey getting the icing prepared.

The main house is is going to sit on this cardboard sheet. I used cupcake frosting to create a bed of "snow" underneath the house.

Prepping one of the walls.

Ian getting a taste of icing. Mmm.

More house assembly.

More icing? No, turns out he loves guacamole. He ate almost an entire 100 calorie pack of the mild guac.

Aubrey working on one of the smaller houses.

While T worked on another house.

Every gingerbread village needs a giant Christmas tree. Theresa iced each of the layers and made sure they stacked up right.

The instructions said to put the roof on and hold it on for a few minutes.

Done with the base of the tree. Looks great girls! Time to decorate it!

Theresa's using the included piping bag and star tip to add the green pine tree needles. Aubrey doesn't seem too impressed.

Yeah, I don't think she's liking it.

After being in her hand so long, the icing started getting warm and wasn't sticking like it should.

Time to add decoration.

Well it doesn't quite look like the box, but I think it turned out just great. Nice work Theresa.

Those gingerbread houses were given 48 hours to set so we could decorate them without them falling apart on us.

Abby and Aubrey starting their houses.

Then Aubrey and I attacked the main chateau.

It doesn't quite look like the box, but I think it looks awesome! I'm really proud of that wreath with the fondant ribbon.

I designed the roof and Aubrey designed the side wall. Pretty nice right? Check out those icicles hanging from the roof too!

After cleaning up for the night and retiring to the kitchen, I hear a *crack* coming from the dining room. That can't be good...

Guess that was too much weight for the roof to hold even though it had sat for 48 hours. All my beautiful icicles were destroyed. Oh well, time to fix it. More icing and some cardboard props to hold it all together and we'll try again tomorrow.

The next day, the boys got into decorating their houses.

And the girls decorated our other trees.

Time for Theresa to do her decoration of the main chateau. I did a front face and a side, leaving her the other face and side.

Chief inspector Ian supervising the project.

Aub really got into helping out.

Ta-da! Our Christmas village. All the kids decorated their own house. Abby and Aub took care of the the Christmas trees and the gingerbread men. I really like the Santa hat on the one on the left.

And the same village but with Theresa's side showing.

Theresa's wreath looks great and that's an awesome stained glass window made out of slices gumdrops.

Nice job on the roof and side windows.

In the end, everyone had a really good time and building gingerbread houses might just be a new tradition at our house.