Tis the Season

When you have children, you are motivated to do things at Christmas time that you have never done before. I heard some ladies at my MOPs group talk about putting together gingerbread houses with their kids. I thought I'd investigate it but had my doubts. I assumed such a thing would be insanely hard to do. However, I was glad to find out you can buy these easy to put together kits that include everything you need - woohoo! One of the perks of living in the 21st century! I found two different ones at Target for about $10 each: (Option 1) included everything you need and you put the house together (Option 2) the gingerbread house is already constructed you just decorate it (candy and icing again included.) Well, I felt like I would be a total wimp to go with the the pre-fab gingerbread house, so I purchased Option 1.

During Elisabeth's afternoon nap, I focused Jonah on the task at hand and set about putting it together. I finally got the structure of the house put together despite Jonah's "help." He was in a hurry to decorate with (a.k.a eat) the candy. I found that decorating the house prettily like the picture on the box, was not going to happen - I cut the hole in the icing bag too big for one thing. Jonah's desire to get to the candy part of this production prompted me to stick the roof on and add icing before the suggested wait time was over. When we got the house nearly finished, I noticed the roof pieces were beginning to slide down. At that point I had three thoughts (1) I guess I should have waited the extra few minutes for the roof joints to dry (2) now I know why I heard some ladies say they used super glue on their gingerbread houses and (3) next time maybe I should go with the prefab gingerbread house.

Here's a picture of Jonah with our creation. Note the cups propping the roof up.



The next day we didn't need the cups once the icing hardened.