Showing posts with label Gingerbread House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gingerbread House. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Gingerbread House 2012

I realise that Christmas was last month and a Gingerbread House post is sort of out of place in January but I still want to share our Gingerbread House. I ended up with a bit of a long blogging break over the Christmas Holiday  It wasn't planned, just sort of happened. With the girls out of school I really enjoyed spending time with them and our family and blogging took a back seat. Now I want to catch up!


So again we went with the Gingerbread House kit made by Wilton  I really think it's a good way to go instead of baking the house from scratch. I bought a few marshmallows and some extra candy to go with it but you certainly could make due with what's in the box. This year, somehow, I made the Royal icing a bit too thick. It worked out OK but was hard to squeeze. In general our Gingerbread House procedure went as follows. I am in charge of assembly and the icing. The girls tell me where to put icing and they glue on the candies. This year we also used some squeeze tube coloured icing and I let Amy use that on her own. We used a muffin tin to keep track of the candies again. I forgot to take a before picture so this is an after photo. Obviously there was lots of candy on the house already!


This is such great fun. There's a little laughter, a little candy and icing eating and everyone ends up happy and proud of their work.

Rose and Heidi wanted me to take a picture of them sneaking into the photos. Goofballs.

Emily was still a little too young to help but maybe next year. She did try to sweep the floor afterwards in the hopes of finding some stray candies I'm sure! She was most upset that I wouldn't give her any but they were all choking hazards. I did give her a little taste of icing though ;)


This is one of the Gingerbread House kits and these are the brands of icing that we used for the coloured icing. It worked quite well to "glue" the candies on the house.

Saturday, December 31, 2011

First ever gingerbread house !


I wasn't originally too keen on making a gingerbread house with the girls. There was just so much going on in the house I thought it would be a bit of a disaster - finding a pattern, making the pieces, assembling the house etc. all while caring for sweet baby Emily. Enter the gingerbread kit! My Mom bought us a Wilton gingerbread house kit and nonchalantly gave it to the girls a few weeks before Christmas. That pretty much sealed the deal - we were making a gingerbread house!
I did a few Internet searches and saw some different ideas and a few tips on making gingerbread houses with children.  3 tips stood out: use a kit and save yourself any baking drama plus younger kids enjoy the candy part the most, not the baking and assembly and waiting part, buy candy that is NOT your children's favourites (so they eat less during the process) and put the candy in a muffin tin so it's easy to choose and also keep the work area tidier without a bunch of opened candy bags strewn about. Win, Win, Win. The kit came with some candy but I bought a few extras just in case - I fully expected some to be eaten as we worked and we all did ;)

Here's our candy all set up:
 I made 2 muffin tins to share between the 3 girls, I manned the royal icing bag.
Christmas dots, M&Ms, spearmint trees, traditional hard candy mix, fruit swirls, spice drops all bought by me. The kit included a few gummy trees, a few flat gumdrops, and the little colourful round candies.
I didn't get any action shots. I took a few on my phone which turned out terrible. It really was a pretty busy event and stopping to snap photos was not going to happen. Perhaps next time, now that I have one gingerbread house under my belt!

Here's our finished house:
Rose didn't want to stop decorating once we finished the house and walkway, so we added an entire front yard that she decorated. Can you see the little orange doorknob? Amy's idea - because how does the gingerbread man open the door!?!

The better side!
Rose was very proud of her Christmas Dots pattern on the roof.

The failed attempt at window curtains side - LOL!
There must have been a wicked storm 'cuz those trees are leaning :)

The back spice drop design

All in all I think I thinned the Royal icing too much. I knew that I was planning on doing the assembly one day and the decorating the next so I thought that *slightly* thinner icing would be better as I expected it to stiffen up a bit after being left in the bag overnight. Well it didn't really, so next time I won't do that. It wasn't a major problem I just had to get the kids to hold the items on for a bit before letting go. I think they did a great job overall.

This activity was SO FUN! I feel so silly for being afraid. The girls had a blast and we will make one every year from now on I'm certain. The kit made it really easy too. The pieces were precut, a base was included, all you have to do is add water to the icing mix and put it in the enclosed bag then assemble and decorate. Could. Not. Be. Easier.

Thanks MOM for *encouraging* me into a fun activity!