Sunday, December 25, 2011

Gingerbread Houses

A couple of weeks ago, we did a little activity together that Andrew and I have come to love:  decorating gingerbread (graham cracker) houses! Andrew and I have done this in years past with some dear friends of ours who have since moved away, so I took it upon myself to stop wallowing in self-pity about our far-away friends and get to work!


It was the girls' first gingerbread house experience. Mostly they were excited to eat the candy. Josie was a little confused at first.


Holly got to work right away eating her fill of the assortment I laid out.


But then I showed her how to pipe frosting onto the candy and she enjoyed that quite a bit.


Here's how it went with Josie. I put a piece of candy on her house, and she ate it. I put another piece of candy on her house, and she ate it. Then she tore the roof off and ate that. Holly was upset that Josie destroyed her house, but to each his own. (And it was literally destroyed. She had a great time doing it.)


My completed house.


Holly's finished product. Not bad for her first time!


Andrew's house.

I have to say, this was my first time engineering and constructing the houses themselves; I did this ahead of time so we could just concentrate on decorating. The slope for the roofs on my and Andrew's houses are off; a grave error that I learned from and will be sure to correct next year.

We have had so much fun with our little Christmastime traditions this year! Holly is finally old enough to really get involved in Christmas and start to understand what it's all about.