Adventures of Making a Gingerbread House

If you're on my Facebook friends list, then you may have already heard of my gingerbread house collapse last night, but for those who aren't, this is how it went...

I bought a kit to make the house...the kit comes with a mix for the frosting...it says to add 5 tablespoons of water and mix with a blender...well, 5 tablespoons barely wet a tiny section of the powder...so I kept adding more water and finally stopped thinking I had to have added too much by now...but the mix was still SUPER THICK....so thick that I hurt my hands trying to squeeze it out of the tube thing throughout the night...

I'm guessing that because it was too thick, it wasn't as sticky as it should have been, which probably contributed to its collapse....

So anyways, my son and I continue to follow the directions and put the house together...first the 4 walls...check.  Now, wait 1 hour.....1 HOUR?  My 4yr old son doesn't know how to wait 1hr!  In addition, we didn't start until 8pm....late, I know - but he takes FOREVER to eat dinner...literally an hour and a half...

So instead of an hour, I wait about 15 min..that should be good, right?  OK, next step...put on the roof....check.  Now, wait 2 hours..............2 HOURS????  WOW.....I guess I should have read ALL the directions before I decided to sit down and attempt this project.  Well...I don't have 2hrs....the frosting is going to be hard if I wait til morning to finish.....hmmmm.....

10 minutes later....ok, that should be good!  Let's start decorating....let's frost the roof....wow, this frosting is HARD...it doesn't stick to the roof....hmmm, wetting a paper towel and smearing the frosting on seems to work....except I'm probably pressing down too hard....oh no!  There goes a wall...maybe I can refrost it and put it back....trying...trying...oh no!  The roof panel is sliding...put it back up....oh no!  the other roof panel....ahhh!!  The other wall.....

Moments later, all 4 walls and 2 roof panels are now in a pile.....bummer.

I thought I was going to run out of frosting (which I didn't) and my mind.....where was the super glue in the house??

OK...take a deep breath...let's try this again....did I wait an hour after putting the walls up this time?  No....did I wait 2hrs after putting the roof on?  No....but I did wait about an hour this time....I forced myself to walk away and find something else to do.

When I came back to it, it looked pretty sturdy to me....the roof was almost finished frosting from my first attempt, although covered in fingerprints and now hard....oh well.

So we started decorating again....this was the fun part. :)  So about midnight or so, we finally finished....good thing he's not in school yet and I'm home during the days....we slept in pretty late this morning.....but look at what a beauty we churned out!

Not perfect....a bit of random frosting splatters everywhere....but it gives it character, ya know?  :)

Oh...and one of the walls is barely standing....you can see it a little more up close here:

But overall, pretty good.  hopefully it stays standing till the holidays are over. :)  Last year ours caved in right around Christmas day I think....

Tonight.....I'm trying sugar cookies...I'm infamous for burning cookies though, so we'll see...I actually bought some parchment paper this time though...maybe that'll help. :)