Saturday, April 4, 2009

Better Late than Never? Gingerbread House Pictures


WAY back in December, our family hosted a Gingerbread House Camp.  This warm and sunny April day seems like a good time to remember and share pictures.  Hopefully this will ward off any more unwelcome spring snow!

Three families joined us for a truly busy total of 6 children.  Most of them created their own houses.  One house had a delayed start that just never quite got off the ground, somehow his cookies were too soft and while his mom put in a Herculean effort to make the walls stand, gravity won out in the end.  On the third day of our camp, the skies open up and dumped more snow than I ever remember seeing in Seattle.   Sadly, this inhibited friends from coming to finish up their houses, however our family found embellishing our houses to be the perfect post-sledding activity.

Pictures of the sugary fun follow. Because we are now about to mix formatting and Blogger, prepare yourself for a little craziness.

Some children worked together to mix their own personal batches of dough, while others chose the design for their houses and cut the necessary pattern pieces. My favorite part is always watching the bigs and littles work together.

     
  

Dough perfected, we rolled out and trimmed it to fit our patterns. 10 minutes in the oven and time to cool got us ready for assembly.


The grind of preparation completed, we started the intricate business of decorating the houses. The kids could not get over the bowls and bowls of candy at their finger tips and the temptation to continually cram their little mouths with the sugary goodness overwhelmed them.  Our final compromise ended up with each child "shopping" for a small bowl of eating candy with the promise that all (in reality, most) other candies would go on the houses.

For a new understanding of the word fast, try watching a 2 year old swipe goodies off his sister's house when she looks away! 
  

Here is the line up of the houses awaiting day two of decorating. Never in the history of time has a home looked more holiday festive than ours did with 6 gingerbread houses on display.


Friends' masterpieces were delivered before I managed to get final pictures of them.  Here are the Barnacle creations in all their glory.

Theo's Gingerbread Castle, complete with many chocolate weapons, cannons and marshmellow knights.
      

Rosie's House of Delicious Treats.


Bill, who worked through the first days of the camp, used our scraps to create his own very special Gingerbread Robot Monkey. Cute and yummy.
     

Sara's House, the not-so-secret reason I hosted the camp.
   

And of course, the highly desired end result.
    

    



2 comments:

Maggie said...

Thank you for sharing. They look great! Very impressive.

Maggie said...

Thank you for sharing. they look great!