Making memories

I've decided to start a new Christmas tradition when I get home: making gingerbread houses. They are so much fun! Tuesday, Andrea, Lindsi, Chastity and I spent over three hours creating these crazy and colorful houses.

At first we we going to plan them carefully with the goal of making them exceptionally pretty, but we ended up sticking candy all over them and making halarious little candy creations to decorate the "yards" around the houses. Here are front and back views of both houses, but I think we may have added a couple of things (including powdered sugar snow) to the yards after these pictures were taken. We laughed so hard when we were making these!




This is the front of the "church." The doors are taffy, there's a little Mike-and-Ike and Dots nativity scene to the left. Joseph is a banana leaning over the pineapple Christ child, and Mary is the little pink heart. The pathway to the doors is Mike-and-Ike's and grape Nerds. There's a green Dots bush to the right of the doors and a Tootsie Roll and frosting bonfire to the right. A yellow fruit Tootsie Roll mailbox and Sprees line the front. The ginormous star on the front of the church is a leftover gingerbread cookie with green Skittles around it. Sprees and red licorice cover the roof.



The back of the church has a huge gingerbread candy cane with yellow Skittles. There's a cute little "pond" made of blue Sweet Tarts with a disproportionate Dots duck (with a banana bill) sitting on it. There's a green frosting-covered lollipop tree, anchored in a cookie, with fruit stuck all over it. There's also a little Dots evergreen tree on the side of the church, with a Sweet Tarts wishing well to the side of that.

This house has Skittles and Sweet Tarts stuck all over the front and another taffy door. To the far left is a Skittles and Sweet Tarts evergreen tree with a yellow "star" stuck on top. Below that is a little wagon on Whopper wheels carrying Nerds "coal" for the children on Santa's naughty list. Two green Spree bushes sit on both sides of the Skittles and Nerds path. There's also a yellow Tootsie Roll mailbox for this house, too, but the real star of this show are the three little Tootsie Roll carolers with Dots and Spree hats and standing on a frosted Nerds box. Just behind them you can see a green-frosted cookie bush with yellow and orange Skittles.

The back of this house has a Nerds-box choo-choo train, decorated with mini Blow Pops, bananas, Spree tires, and a fruit Tootsie Roll smoke stack. Behind that is a Dots snowman and another cookie bush, this time with Nerds. Beside that is another frosted lollipop fruit tree with a cookie base. Around the backyard is a licorice and Tootsie Roll rail fence, which you can't see well in this picture.

And everything was covered with a fine dusting of powdered sugar snow! We're quite proud of our cute, silly little edible houses!