Gingerbread House Year 4; the biggest and best yet!

This has become my favorite Christmas tradition with my kids; decorating gingerbread houses. In years past we've glued together graham crackers and decorated small houses.  

But this year I decided we needed to get a bit more sophisticated and challenge ourselves a bit. 

I found some large cardboard and hot glued a house together real quick, the chimney is out of proportion but it worked. 

Then I pulled out leftover Halloween candy from the refrigerator and Christmas candy from a parade we went to a couple weeks ago. We had a LOT more candy than I thought, surely more than enough. 

The boys decided they needed to separate the candy by colors and then they went at it! 

While the boys worked on the house, Yahoo and I decorated ice cream cones to look like trees. 

Surprisingly, a very small amount of candy was eaten!

The only candy I ended up buying for this project was licorice for the chimney. 

One hour later our house was done!! 

And there wasn't ONE piece of candy left in the house....they used it all!! 

LOL...they even used some Halloween suckers with bony hands! 

See the one sticking out of the chimney? Yip says that it's Santa's hand after he fell in the fireplace fire. 

During our "creative" building process Yip suggested that next year we make a skyscraper gingerbread house! How cool would that be?? I've been envisioning what this yearly tradition might grow into the older my kids get. Might we start making an entire village? Will we have to invest a large chunk of our Christmas budget into candy for decorating? Will our gingerbread houses morph into entire room installations? The possibilities are endless!!! 

Marker Monday - Candy Tray (made from Candy!)

A friend of mine was showing her candy tray made from candy, an idea she got off Pinterest but I haven't been able to find it, and it was so easy I made one the same afternoon! 

My friend used green and red peppermints and placed them in a rectangular casserole dish on parchment paper. The hodge podge above was the only hard candy we had left and I didn't have any parchment paper so I sprayed a pie pan with cooking spray. 

After spraying it Yahoo and I (mostly Yahoo) arranged the candies. You want them evenly spaced and not touching. Then carefully put it in a 350 degree oven, without shifting the candies, for 8 minutes. Mine were left in a few minutes too long. 

I found the yellow butterscotch candies didn't melt at the same rate as the others so while it was still warm I smooshed the yellows a bit with a bag of a spoon. 

After it was cooled I popped it out wiped off the greasy residue and glued a circular piece of felt underneath. 

So easy, so fun and surprisingly sturdy! 

But I can do better, I'm thinking of making a bigger one for Easter with some pastel colored candies..if I can find any! 

Our Gingerbread House Tradition

We had a pretty busy weekend! 

First a tumbleweed snowman then meeting Santa (and the realization that I no longer have babies!) and finally we finished our weekend with our third year of making gingerbread houses. 

Each Halloween I rummage through the kids' trick or treat candy, eat all the chocolate (kinda kidding) then freeze about half of it for decorating gingerbread houses. 

The first year I did this I thought I could stick the house together with frosting..WRONG! It fell apart. So since then I hot glue the houses together first. What a lifesaver! 

I don't decorate one just the kids. 

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite holiday traditions.

I just love to watch my kids be creative. 

Yahoo was going to join us that day but her nap got all screwed up and she woke up late. 

Not that she would have actually decorated anything; once she came to the table she didn't do much but eat candy! 

This year we invited a "grandma" from church to come help us. She only has one grandchild who's in college so we thought we could all enjoy decorating houses together. 

I think she had a lot of fun. I think she talked and played with us more than she decorated! 

And thanks Aunt Jewel for the gingerbread man kit! They turned out very neat! 

Yip even made a Frankenstein cookie. Can you pick it out? 

Hint; it's the one with the green face. 

A lot of people have been blogging about their holiday traditions; 

(read about Sarah and her family's Cookie Day...a tradition of 32 years!) 

We have one or two more holiday traditions I may get a chance to share with you. But I want to know what kind of traditions your family has? What special holiday activity do you look forward to sharing with your family every year?