Gingerbread House Fun - 2016!

It's a tradition started years and years ago! I recall buying ONE for Tyson and I and being so excited to work on it with him and then realizing that my vision of the final outcome was NOTHING like a 3 year old's vision.  I either had to adopt the attitude of "let him have fun" or "control".  I wanted this tradition to be filled with good memories, so I allowed him to decorate it whatever way he desired.  And then came two more babies, which later meant two more gingerbread houses, making a total of 3 gingerbread houses. Haha.  This was the first year, I decided mommy needed a gingerbread house of her own.  I set up our stations filled with the pre-assembled gingerbread house, frosting, a butter knife, and all of the FUN embellishments featured below.

The kids were excited and got to work quickly!

My kids are very much perfectionists, so there was a lot of frustration at first! "Mine doesn't look good!", "Mommy yours is so much prettier than mine!", "My frosting looks messy!"  

I just tried to continually remind them that this is supposed to be fun. We aren't entering our homes into a contest and more than likely NO ONE will even see the end result. Things eventually got a lot more light hearted.

I enjoyed sitting still and letting my creative juices flow.  Hello shiny head. Haha.  Geez.

The houses were a lot smaller than I had hoped, but a lot larger than the kids had patience for.  Next year, I may get them the mini homes.

At one point, I was completely deserted at the gingerbread house table! Their attention span lasted about 25 minutes.  NOT BAD, but I sat at that table for 1.50 hours.  

Here is the end result... my house!

Love Shack!

Lilah's house!

Tyson's house.

Jaxey's house.

And of course, as you saw in the last post, after the holidays, I let the kids SMASH their gingerbread houses with a hammer. We will NOW be making that our NEWEST end of the Christmas season tradition. LOL! ALL that HARD WORK for NOTHING!