Gingerbread Party

For the 8th year in a row, we spent the Saturday after Thanksgiving making gingerbread houses.

Generally, we only make one big house. In the beginning, it was actually just me making the gingerbread house and Stephen escaping with the kids to places far away to avoid the wrath of the stressed out gingerbread architect. But, I like to think I've mellowed out over the years. Okay, at least where gingerbread is concerned!

This year, we invited a few friends over to decorate gingerbread houses together. Some of Alicia's friends from dance class and Tess's friend from school joined us in our confectionery creativity. I had prebaked the house pieces yesterday. Some walls had butterscotch windows, some didn't.

We spent a few hours assembling little houses and loading them up with all sorts of colorful candies. Each guest brought some candy decorations to share and, added to our stockpile, we ended up with a very big selection to meet all decorative tastes. Lots of the houses had Big Red gum doors. There were gum drop bushes and M&M shingles. Several decorators added marshmallow snowmen to their yards.


The end result was 7 little gingerbread houses all decked out in their sugary finest. They looked good enough to eat. But, instead, we just munched on the leftover candy so the houses could be used as decor throughout the season.