Gingerbread Houses 2012

I went a little crazy this year and made enough dough for 16 large gingerbread houses. We'd planned on inviting some friends over to decorate with us but I was feeling overwhelmed so we decided to just do it as a family. I really prefer it that way and will need to remind myself of that in future years. I did decorate 2 extra houses for Paige to give as gifts to her kindergartener teacher and teacher's aide. And we assembled the rest of the houses and gave away kits complete with frosting and candy to some friends in our ward. That's something that I could see us doing again and is a great alternative to the chaos of having everyone making a huge mess at our house :)

Ben was the first to get started on his house and unfortunately he got the first bag of frosting which happened to be a bit soft and was taking a long time to set. That combined with the fact that he overloaded his roof resulted in a disaster.

The beginning of the roof collapse. 

Ben realized what was happening and decided to turn it into a foreclosure.

I

Claire's house. 

I obviously had no time to do hair that day, what with all the work baking gingerbread.

Cautious Paige was under no circumstances going to repeat her father's mistakes. Nothing touched that roof!

My house. 

I actually decorated it a day later, in the evening after the kids went to bed, while Ben and I listened to the BYU bowl game over the internet.

Mrs. Dile's and Mrs. Dahl's houses. 

They seemed really happy to get them, and Paige was SO excited to give them to them.