Gingerbread House Love

I bought a gingerbread house kit in November at Ikea, but as the holidays got busier I just never got around to doing it.  Add to that the fact that Sarah spent an afternoon with my mom and came home with a fully decorated house, I figured the last thing we all needed was TWO candy houses here, so I put our kit aside and there it sat - until TODAY!

Well yesterday, actually.

I decided that Valentine's day was a great time to decorate a house.  Stores are full of tons of different candy making it easy to do a house that's decidedly Valentine-y (no candy canes on this guy!).  Think conversation hearts, cinnamon hearts, pink sugared gel hearts.  

I put the house together on Saturday evening figuring it would be good to give it some time for the frosting to firm up. For frosting I just used a few plain old store bought tubs of vanilla/white frosting with about 5 drops of red food coloring per tub.  I piped it on with a disposable piping bag - no tip, just cut the end off.  When I opened the package a few pieces were broken, but I was able to use a graham cracker "glued" to the back as support to hold it all together.

Today we decorated.  My role was piping.  Sarah was the decorator extraordinaire.  

Final product with the artist:

As a project this was super easy, lots of fun, and a chance for Sarah to explore her creative side.



Bonus: we have leftover M&Ms