Ginger Bread Houses

It has become a tradition in my family to decorate a gingerbread house every Christmas. Notice that I said decorate and not make gingerbread houses. I believe the tradition began when one year I got it in my head that I would make a gingerbread house and then we would decorate it as a family. I didn't have a pattern but figured that it couldn't be that difficult and so I just made my own. We ended up with a house that was the size of a small child (okay that might be a slight exaggeration but it was huge!) and all of the pieces were different sizes and so none of the sides matched up. We ended up hot gluing together the pieces and there were still gaping holes in the house.

From that year on we bought the pre-made Costco kits. They are great! They come with lots of candy, pre-made frosting, and lots of little ginger bread men and trees to decorate. The kids had a lot of fun this year. I could tell that they had a lot of fun based on the incredible amounts of frosting, sugar, and candy that were in my kitchen. Owen got pretty good at putting the candy on the house too. Unfortunately he was better at picking the candy off of the house and so his side was pretty bare. I think he ate more candy on that night than he has in his life. He literally couldn't stand still. The houses turned out cute, although ours is already starting to lose candy that just wasn't stuck on very well. I guess ginger bread houses weren't meant to last forever though!