Gingerbread Houses Courtesy of Snowflake

On December 23rd, our mischievous little elf, brought the girls their gingerbread house kits.

I had planned on doing these over the weekend before Christmas, but late Saturday night I opened up the kit and realized that you had to make homemade icing?!?!!  In case you haven't figured it out by reading my blog- I am not that into homemade endeavors ;).  I quickly made a decision to put these away for a slower day during Christmas vacation when I hopefully had more energy.

So December 23rd it was.  The girls woke up ridiculously early and were ready to go! Me, on the other hand, told them I needed to drink at least one cup of coffee before we started.  So around 7 in the morning, I finally pulled out all of the stuff and we got started.  Evsie's didn't mind the icing making or eating process at all ;).

I bought the Trader Joe's gingerbread houses because I had read how sturdy they were, but I never read that you had to whip up your own icing and if we did these again, I would remove the sprinkle packages from the boxes- what a mess!

We put some strategic icing on Ev's house so that all she would have to do is 'decorate' it.

However, we let Emma have full reign and decorating control over her icing and decorations and just helped out when she asked.

Is anyone surprised that Emma lined up her M and M's in a row ;).

Evsie's and Emma, hard at work.

They have completely different work styles, Emma methodically went through and put her candy on her house chit chatting away the whole time, while Ev's worked at random sneaking a few bites of candy from time to time and then looking at me while sheepishly grinning and saying 'me eat some my candy, mom.'.

When they were all finished up, they took a minute to admire each other's houses.

Before semi-obliging me with my photo requests.

These two and their elf were pretty happy about the morning activity.

Detailed shots of Emma's house.  Do you see how she decided to use her sprinkles?!?

I had gone into the kitchen to put the camera away and when I came back into the dining room, Ev's was eating a bite of her gingerbread house (so I promptly ran back into the kitchen to grab the camera and still caught her doing this!).

That night we were having my family over for a pizza dinner so I told the girls they couldn't eat any of their gingerbread house until after the get-together.  I set the gingerbread houses far back on the oven.  We headed upstairs for baths and when we came back down, naked Everly had pulled her car over to the oven, stood up on her tippy toes and was trying to reach her gingerbread house with all her might.  I snuck a picture on my phone (I won't post it because she's naked!), then yelled out Everly Grace- you are a stinkerpants!! And we all burst into laughter.  That girl loved her gingerbread house!