Our Gingerbread Mansion

Our finished gingerbread mansion complete with mess.

Another view of the masterpiece.

We haven't made a gingerbread house since we made one on Christmas Eve in Virginia with our good friends the Gulick's. When we decided to go ahead and make one this year we couldn't decided if we should make one for each kid to decorate or make a great big one for the entire family to decorate. We finally decided most of our kids are too little to do one themselves and so a great BIG one was made.

Kenny did the planning and designing of the gingerbread house as well as the construction. I probably should have helped more, but mostly I just sat back and watched. He did an awesome job and it took a couple days to get it all done.

The planning stage.

Kenny designed it on a 3D computer program. Now that's serious gingerbread house making.

The house was very well thought out by Kenny including the 'stained glass' windows.

After the sides were up (before the roof went on) we let the kids put some brick (chocolate covered banana chips) around the bottom of the house.

Next came the walkway (rock candy.) The kids enjoyed this an they really liked that we bought way too much walkway (it was very, very yummy.)

Finally on Christmas Eve the roof was added and Daddy installed triscuits as shingles. After that, the kids were allowed to decorate it as they liked. Ben and Sarah added the candies to the top and Daddy and the kids created the sucker and candy cane fence while I was helping the kids wrap presents for their siblings. Next Ben put lights (M&M's) around the windows and Sarah Kate decorated the trusses with gum drops.

Gracie is too little to get much out of decorating a gingerbread house, but she sure LOVED eating the frosting.

After the present wrapping was done I came out to help the kids decorate. Hannah really wanted to decorate with the big candy canes and she was determined to have them on the roof. Not a typical place for candy canes, but she loved it and that's all that matters.

We all just went to work decorating how ever we liked and finally. . .

It was done!

We had so much fun making our gingerbread house and we can't wait to do it again next Christmas. Hopefully we'll be able to make it quicker now that we know how it's done. What a great family project.