Every year at Christmas time we make gingerbread houses. Well, technically they are graham cracker houses but they're still fun. Basically what happens is I go to the store and buy $4897 worth of candy. Then my girls spend approximately 4 hours creating and decorating their houses and in the final thirty minutes all the sugar consumed while creating and decorating kicks in and everyone feels overwhelmed by the disaster that is the kitchen and then whew! they're done. Great activity for a snow day.
We've learned thru the years which candy works best for a particular project...
We like to use fruit stripe gum to make cute shutters but couldn't find any this year so we tried sugar wafer cookies instead. And we used mini pretzels for the fencing. By the way, pretzels are an essential ingredient in gingerbread house construction...they help ease the sugar high that results after you've eaten one or two or maybe a hundred pieces of candy.
And here's another essential ingredient...
the mobile phone...gotta have that handy because 327 text messages an important call could come in every 30 seconds at any time
Daughter2 almost threw in the towel during the construction phase as she tried to cut graham crackers to precisely fill the eaves in the roof
but she persevered
My girls are nearly all grown up. They are college students with busy lives away from home. But there are some things you just never outgrow...and for that I am thankful.
