Gingerbread mansions

Originally posted on 12/9/07
~We are getting together again this year. I'll let you know if we build or blow up anything! LOL! : )
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This past weekend we had the H Family over, which is always great fun. This year we all decorated our own dessert. I made the lollipop cookies that we had at Joy's polka dot birthday party.
~This turned out to be really easy and not very messy.
~Nothing like what we did together last year!

Here's the story:
The H Family are quite an experienced gingerbread making family and they used to do the whole thing from scratch. (lots of work!) This intrigued my hubby who wanted to try an easier version that both our families could do together.
I found this in Martha's magazine and it seemed simple and fun. Ya know, no baking involved. whoo-hoo!


Well, Martha calls these "cottages." It's funny now, to see the word "cottage." Because I didn't notice that last year on the directions and when our two families got together, "Cottages" were NOT what anybody had in mind. I wish I would have known that they were thinking of gingerbread mansions!
And let's just say that graham crackers and frosting did not hold this thing together...

But more on that later.

First of all, it wasn't like our BOYS were all that into the idea of even making gingerbread houses. But the H Family changed their mind about this being a girly endeavor because they said that after New Year's they take their gingerbread houses outside and

BLOW THEM UP!

How cool is that!? They do it with b-b guns and bottle rockets. Now,that was something that our boys could get into, and so that is how we got them to build them in the first place. : )

Carlos came over that night too and he kept joking under his breath about how 'gay' it was to build gingerbread houses. But the funny part was, that once we got him started building one, he was TOTALLY into it.

It was hilarious.

He wasn't going to have a "cottage" or anything small. It was going to be the biggest and the best. It became one testosterone charged event...at least in the living room where he was. : )

The kids had the best time and they literally sat at the kitchen table and created for two solid hours.

My hubby ended up making a couple of trips to P*blix because we discovered that store brand graham crackers would crumble and that only the name brand ones worked. And our whole house looked like a bakery exploded in it. : )

Then Carlos, who was determined to win our little contest (which we'd roped our neighbor into judging) sent Zachary to the shed to get

the DRY WALL MUD

Oh mercy! I decided not to worry that I had powdered sugar everywhere and might be about to have dry wall mud on top of all that! ~But, he didn't spill a drop!

With that dry wall mud, he and Zach built their cute, huge mega church:

But we all disqualified them from our contest, since theirs was no longer EDIBLE. : )

Aren't these cute?

I promptly sprayed them all with RAID (after the contest- which I guess made them inedible too) because we live in the insect capital of the United States, and I could just picture having ants and roaches on them before morning.

After New Year's, we had a 'blowing up event' but that doggone Raid had made them too soggy. (my bad) So, all the b-b's just sunk inside the houses and did not give my boys the thrills that they'd expected. The bottle rockets didn't even dent them.

So, if you ever make gingerbread cottages/houses/mansions

and plan to blow them up afterwards,

don't spray them with Raid. And be really careful with the dry wall mud! ; )
~Becky