Making a Gingerbread House

David and I thought it would be a good year to start a gingerbread house making tradition, and so we got one of those kits at Costco. You would think it would be super easy then to make it since all the pieces are there and ready to go. Then....da, da, DUH....enter the frosting. UGH! This picture pretty much sums up our experience. Josiah holding onto the candy (wanting to eat it all and lick the frosting) and me working feverishly with this stupid frosting. It came with a bag and early on into this, somehow I applied too much pressure and it popped. Yeah...did I mention I made quite a huge frosting mess throughout this project? So instead of nice "piping" around the house, I had big gloppy gobs of white frosting making impromtu icicles off the sides of the roof. Ahem...I meant to do that I mean...yeah, they're icicles, look how creative I am!

Oh another fun note was that I didn't wait for the frosting to dry enough after the initial "put-together" stage and then brilliantly put in some of the trees right in the way of where I would decorate the house. I tried to get to the windows to frost them and upon tipping the tray a bit too much apparently the roof started slipping off. Hence all the cracked, dried frosting on top of the mints that took a dive INTO the house at one point. I got kind of frustrated about then and said, "Honey...help...this is not working," to which he replied, "It's OK, it is just your first time making it and it doesn't have to be perfect." Later, I told him to remind me someday that I should never decide to be a cake decorator at a future date. Me and frosting decor don't seem to jive. Now eating frosting, well that is another story! :) Anyway, I ran out of frosting towards the end of my creative attempt at gingerbread construction and David got me some more white frosting the next day to finish off the monstrousity of candy goodness. Josiah had fun helping from time to time and more fun begging for frosting and gumdrops. I tried to get him to pose with a smile here, but as you can see...no luck on that count. Our kitchen now has the alluring smell of frosting as you walk through. Echo the dog takes a few extra sniffs as she passes by. :) Oh and another funny moment for this one. Do you notice that lovely green window on the left? Yeah, at one point Josiah said, "Mommy, why did you make a pretzel?" At first, I didn't know what he meant, but sure enough if you look at my green window there it resembles a pretzel! Umm...yeah, did I mention I am not so good at the piping? Oh and I would like to point out though that they didn't provide a "drawing" tip for the windows, but rather had the star like shaped one instead. Yet, the picture had the single line outline. So, there was quite a learning curve on the gingerbread house creation this year, but next year....LOOK OUT!!