We spent Wednesday afternoon sugaring up the 1st annual Harper Gingerbread House. I must say, the end result was beyond what I expected. The girls were very creative in their ideas for where to use the different types of candy, and we all had a good time. The house turned out a lot bigger than I anticipated, we had a some lack of structural integrity in the roof, but the royal icing came through and hardened like cement to keep it together. I found the recipe for both the house and the icing online here and it worked great. I'll do it again next year, but be more precise with my cutting and measuring of the pieces. Every time I walk by the house, it smells beautifully like gingerbread and I want to scratch and sniff some more, like I did when I was a kid when I read this book, "The Sweet Smell of Christmas"
We are trying to make more traditions for our family. I want each one to accrue our anticipation for Christmas, like the Advent Calendar, with each tradition repeated, the sense of anticipation for the celebration of the birth of our Savior increases, our love for our family increases, and the smiles on our hearts get bigger.
Emma was good at piping the icing.
Audrey was good at testing the sweetness level of the candy. I got all the candy at Dollar Tree for about $7 and used a bag of leftover Dots from Halloween (good reason to buy Halloween candy on clearance after the holiday, to stock up for this project.
Our sweet neigbor Elise came over to help with the festivities, she had a good time, and we were happy to have her there.
The finished project, proudly displayed on our corner counter/bar so we can easily enjoy the sweet smell of Christmas.
We used peppermint disks, small candy canes, large candy canes, sweet stripes (the straight candy canes), spiced candied gumdrops, dots, "Rudolph Red Noses", and Sixlets. Now that we've inaugurated this tradition, I will definitely be on the lookout for candy after Halloween for this. It was really so much fun. I thought it would not turn out, but it was only about $20 for all the ingredients,(the molasses and heavy cream I didn't have on hand) and candy to decorate it, and it turned out way better than the $10 box houses, and smells so much more fragrant too.
A video tour of the house, in all it's imperfect sweet glory!!
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