Gingerbread House

We have never built a gingerbread house with our girls in years past, but we thought Alyssa would enjoy doing it this year, so we bought a gingerbread house making kit (I didn't feel like attempting to make the pieces from scratch). Here is Ashley with the kit in front of her (As soon as it was out of the box, she started crying for all of the different candies and cookies that she couldn't open herself. She almost got a hold of the house pieces which would have been a disaster).

First we iced all of the pieces together. We didn't realize that it would have to sit like this for a half and hour. We played games with the girls to entertain them.

After the 30 minute timer went off, we got to work on decorating. It was at this point that we saw the note in the instructions that said to decorate first and then assemble. I guess that is why the first couple of candies we put on were sliding down the wall and roof. After that, we had Alyssa use the lighter candies on the house and the heavy ones for the ground.

Here is Alyssa with the finished product. She had a lot of fun decorating it and eating candy and icing as she went.

Ashley was quite a challenge as soon as the candy was open. We gave her little piles of sprinkles to eat (small and time consuming to pick up and eat). As soon as she started pulling the bigger candy off of the house, we put her in front of "Dora" and worked fast to finish and get it out of reach. Here is Ashley with her Mommy at the end of the night.
Danny bathed the girls while I cleaned up the mess. It was fun to build the gingerbread house and it is fun to have it displayed on top of our TV(out of reach of little hands).