Thursday Tidbits: Gingerbread Fun!

With so much going on during the holidays we hadn't got to decorate our gingerbread house until Christmas Day.

I hadn't planned on even buying a gingerbread house kit because last years attempt went horribly awry. The walls and roof kept collapsing, there was much frustration and a few choice words on my part and we ended up throwing in the towel and just eating the pieces as they were. However, while shopping at Giant Tiger a few weeks ago with the munchkins I saw that they had gingerbread houses marked down from ten bucks to two dollars in the clearance bin. The best part? They were "PRE-ASSEMBELLED" houses, with all the fixings to decorate it included. (Second best part? A free pair of New Year's margarita-shaped, glittery eyeglasses with purchase!) It came with a bag of gum drops, a bag of colored candy beads, two bags of white frosting, and some candy canes. The house itself was already put together so all we had to do was decorate it. I figured it would be a fun little activity for the kids to do together. I kept putting off actually doing it because I was either to exhausted to bother or I just didn't want to deal with frosting everywhere and the sugar-induced craziness that followed.

Finally, on the afternoon of Christmas Day the kids asked me if they could decorate it. Since the holidays were almost over and the house was already a mess from that mornings festivities, I didn't really have any excuse for saying no. I sat them down at the coffee table with aprons on to protect their new clothes that they insisted on wearing. Chanel had not only her new clothes on but also her new coat from Old Navy that she absolutely refused to take off. I figured icing couldn't be too hard to wash off and was for the most part right, although I learned the hard way that once icing has hardened it is not so easy to get it off of a microfibre sofa. I armed them each with a small bag of icing and some candies and let them go to town.                           

An untimely demise...

 Coder had a blast decorating it and had the most adorable look of concentration on his face the entire time. He had his tongue sticking out of the corner of his oh-so-serious little face, trying to line the candies up just so. Nelly, on the other hand, couldn't have cared less. She was concentrating purely on ingesting the decor. All in all, I would say that the gingerbread house was a success. There were no tears and barely any fighting (except when Nelly would eat a candy that Coder had just painstakingly applied) and the end result was totally cute. We displayed it proudly on the kitchen counter for all of one day until Nelly decided she wanted to relocate it and dropped it trying to pull it off of the counter. There were tears for a minute or so until they realized the could eat the candy now. It was a fun activity that kept them for the most part entertained for half hour or so and it was sweet to be able to display their handiwork, but I think I will skip the gingerbread house next year. It is a little to annoying for my liking, what with the candies repeatedly falling off and trying to get them to decorate with them not eat them. I think next year we'll do gingerbread men instead. Less room for error that way. So what kinds of activities did you do with your children this holiday season?