After my husband and I had our first baby in August, holidays and family traditions have a new meaning to our little family of 3. I have always wanted to make my own gingerbread house. It has the same appeal as putting together a 1000 piece puzzle(I enjoy doing those anyway...) although more enjoyable because it's messy and involves candy. The best time to start a new family tradition is after you have the first baby I believe. Not only is it something I think the kids will always love doing, but more importantly it is something we can do as a family together every year.
As I began searching websites for recipes and decorating ideas, I wondered how many other families have never made a gingerbread house, but always wanted to. Perhaps the excuse was the daunting thought of trying to bake a gingerbread house from scratch or maybe dreading the mess their kids would make while building one. So why not just invite some of our family and friends over and make it one big messy party?? And that's what we did! Although I should say I. Andrew looked at me strange when I told him about the party. Oh well, that's a man for you!
Since it was already December, I picked a date and quickly made the invitations (I'm a newly addicted digi-srapper!) and mailed them out.
I then spent countless hours searching for the right recipe, templates and party ideas. I started making the dough on Wednesday and even baked the first one. I burnt the first one!! I adjusted the temp to 350 and baked them for only 15 minutes and they turned out great. After the 15 minutes I spooned crushed up Lifesavers to make stained glass windows on the front of the houses. I think it made them really cute. Thursday I baked the remaining houses and set them out to dry overnight. Friday night I constructed the houses. It was at that time I realized that Bob Villa knew what he was talking about when it came to trimming up the pieces after you baked them. Most of the roofs did not fit together correctly. Oops! Despite having to creatively construct the houses together, it really was the best part about the whole process of making a gingerbread house. Even better than decorating. Yeah, I'm weird!It was so much fun to watch all the guests decorate their own houses. I enjoyed just watching, visiting and taking pictures. Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time and I believe everything went really smooth.....except for my baby screaming while I was trying to make more icing...sorry about that guys!!
Andrew and I ended up decorating our own house Sunday afternoon. We really had a great time and made fun of each other of different things we were decorating the house with. Such as Andrew's red gum ball in the front yard. He was trying to make a snowman I believe but it wasn't working out, so what is it now, a gazing ball? LOL Every time we would start on a new section on the house we would talk about doing a pattern with the candy. Well Andrew would tell me what he thinks it should look like, but I'm a visual learner and have no clue what he means (esp when he uses his builder lingo!) so I start putting the candy on the house to what I think he is talking about. NOPE, I was wrong every time. It was very comi
cal.
Can you tell I got tired of doing a design with all the M&Ms?? Andrew got on to me because I ruined the look of his chimney when I added my spiced gumdrops on top haha!
We took a few pictures and Baby E is always staring at that candy. I can just imagine what our house will look like next year!
Thank you for coming to our first party and making it so much fun! Maybe by next time I'll have one of those fancy gingerbread house molds I've been eyeing and you'll at least have a level roof to decorate. Enjoy the pictures! If you want copies of any of the scrap pages or just the photos alone let me know. If you click on the slide show it will take you to the web album and you can view in a larger format.
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