Gingerbread Extravaganza

Saturday was our annual (minus 2020) Gingerbread House decorating party.  

After a week of preparation... baking wonky houses with lots of big and little bakers, trying to assemble houses with somewhat misshapen, mismatched parts

 (it looked a little like Armageddon when they were finished), 

supplementing with a few store-bought parts that had to be assembled,

making royal icing, and gathering treats for decorations, 

the day finally arrived and all was organized. 

We gathered for a pizza/salad/fruit lunch before getting started on the task of turning Gingerbread into Christmas decorations.

I love this event.  Everyone's enthusiasm is overflowing...

and everyone gets in touch with their inner creativity.

I think that as much candy as is used on the houses- also gets consumed!

This year's event included family

 and adopted family.

All ages joined in the fun...

By the end of the afternoon, we had quite an array of decorated gingerbread.

This is a tradition that really starts the holiday season off on a festive note.  It's worth every bit of work that it takes in preparation.  And with all of the help that I had this year... even the preparation was a blast! Many thanks to my girls for the clean-up help afterwards.  The dining room looked like a candy explosion - before my elves got busy and cleaned it all up!

I'm sure we will find rogue candy over the months to come.

Hubb's gnomey creativity hit an all time high this weekend, when he finished our little woodsy gnome complete with a gnome-home hat!