Over the past 8 years, a fun family night at our church has become a highly anticipated family tradition.   The kids literally count down the days to this special night and begin talking about it atleast a  month in advance.   I am involved in the initial planning each year... what supplies do we need? what time do meet to prep? which night is it taking place and when is the best time to pull this off?   

     Are you wondering what all the fuss is about?  It's our annual Build Your Own Gingerbread House night, of course!     Each year moms and dads, children & grandchildren, teens and their friends, gather for a "sweet" evening of creativity, fun and laughter.    

     A group of us ladies gather in the church kitchen and bake all the ginger cookie pieces and mix up all the icing ahead of time.  Each person that builds a house brings in a bag of candy.  We put all  the candy on one table and this way everyone gets to choose from a large assortment of sweets & treats to decorate their house with. 

       The real challenge is to build a house that will stay standing!  Your architectural skills will be tested while you use the "miracle icing" as mortor to put together 4 walls and a  roof .  When (and if ) you get your house to stand the fun begins as you let your imagination run and decorate a your house to sticky sweet perfection.  I am so impressed by what some of the kids come up with.   Everyone starts with the same basic 6 pieces of gingerbread (ginger cookie) but end up with everything from christmasy cottages to churches to barns to nativity scenes. 

       I got my 6 year old's house to set up quite well this year.   While I was in the kitchen helping out he went ahead and chose all his candy and decorated his house all by himself:

      My 11 yr. old had a tougher time getting his house to stand and starting "eating" it on the way home.  Good thing  Mom snapped this before beforehand:

And my 13 yr. old, well, she planned ahead.    Looking forward to eating her confection ffor the next few days she went with taste over looks:

     ...not to mention, the sooner she was done decorating her house, the sooner she could socialize.  but I do agree --frosted gingerbread covered with dark chocolate chips is totally yummy! 

     So that's one of our fondest family traditions.  I'll be putting the Gingerbread cookie & Icing recipe in a separate post.  I know some families try to preserve their houses until Christmas but not us - after the photos are taken we show know mercy!  This is what's left of them just 3 days later....

Learn more about how we make the GInger bread houses and the recipes by clicking here.