Gingerbread Houses

Christmas is my favorite holiday! Most of my blogs the rest of this month will probably be geared toward the holiday because it just makes me so happy! It’s a time to be with family, take part in old traditions, eat good food, and make memories that last a lifetime. It’s the time of year where you get to sit by the fireplace and drink hot cocoa with marshmallows, and wear oversized sweaters.

One tradition that used to be number one on my holiday list was making gingerbread houses. Now, this wasn’t just any old tradition for our family. We made it a big huge ordeal. We would get together with two other families and have a full out gingerbread house contest!  Everything was top quality too! We used delicious homemade gingerbread and sugary homemade icing; and of course lots of candy! We even used ice cream cones as trees by turning them upside down and frosting them!

Unfortunately this tradition stopped when both families moved away. It was a while ago so it’s not so sad anymore but, every time Christmas rolls around I think about the tradition that used to be my favorite. Not so much because of what we did but, because of who we did it with.

This year my sister and I felt inspired so, we decided to have our own ginger bread house making contest. Honestly though it wasn’t a contest because we had no judge, so we just had fun with it!

 With years of gingerbread house making under my belt I like to say I’m a pro. The sad truth is that we cheated year and bought ours from the store (but I did a great job assembling mine). So for all of you people who bought them, don’t feel bad; so did we. So maybe I’m not a pro but, I do have the practice!

We wanted to go all out of the decorating so my sister bought tons of different candies. We had M&M’s, Twizzlers, mini candy canes, marshmallows, Hershey kisses, gummy bears, and tons of other stuff.  She even made homemade icing like we used to. It was great! She made blue (which I used for cute, little icicles), and red, and green.

My sister and I have completely different techniques. She decided to go crazy with the frosting and cover her house completely. Then she added sprinkles, gummy bears and kisses. It was awesome when she was done. Honestly I’m sure it’ll be great to eat. The cutest part of her house was by far the gummy bears. She placed them all over the yard and around the house. It was like a little gummy bear army.

 

I, on the other hand took a different approach. I carefully made windows out of Twizzlers, frosted shingles on the roof and added M&Ms on top. I also carefully made a wreath right above the door. And yes, I also had little gummy bear residents living in my house.

 

So if you’re going to make a ginger bread house I recommend putting your own twist on it. Don’t follow directions and go crazy! Express who you are and play with your food! It’ll be more fun!