Christmas Happening - Gingerbread Houses

For years we have always made

a gingerbread house.

I enjoy doing it with the kids

and it is one of our 

Christmas traditions.

Last year we went to a friend's house

and each of the kids got

individual gingerbread houses

made out of graham crackers.

I loved the idea so much,

I decided we were doing it from now on!

First we built the houses.

Just the boys helped me with this part.

We did this while the littles were napping.  

We used a small pack

of royal icing I had leftover from 

an unsuccessful attempt at

a gingerbread house 

last year.

We got a kit last year,

but the pieces didn't fit well

together and it was literally a

FLOP!

After we used all of the royal icing,

we still had a lot of building to do,

so we used melted white chocolate.

I melted it and poured it into a squeese bottle.

The melted white chocolate worked great!

It set up quickly,

so the boys and I had to work fast,

which was GOOD!

Then the decorating began!

I had quite a few items leftover from 

previous projects.

And then hit the local grocery store

for some extra stuff

that you usually find in a kit

and that I knew my kids would enjoy.

Daddy even joined in the fun!

Mr. T and I made one together

and he wound up 

eating the decorations off of the house

as fast as

 I could put them on the house!

R is concentrating so hard on this house!

And Mr. T was caught in the act of 

literally eating the decorations out of the container!

Skipped a step, right?

He just ate them straight out of the container

instead of waiting for me to go through

the trouble of putting them on the house.

We also made the Ninja Bread Cookies we purchased

in Boone

on our way back from NC.

Here are the resulting houses:

J's house: 

 Mommy & Mr. T's house:

 R's house:

Ms. Priss's house:

Daddy's house:

Our decorators, 

posing and sampling

their masterpieces!

We have found a new Christmas tradition in this house:

Individual Graham Cracker Gingerbread Houses