Catching Up... Gingerbread House Homeschool Day

We have a few informal homeschool groups here in our area for some of us to get together for park days and other laid back activities.  On St. Nicholas Day, one of the moms invited us to come over for a gingerbread house decorating get-together!  So, we packed up a plate of St. Nicholas cookies and off we went!

Well, we did have to bring a gingerbread house, so we made this one using my gingerbread recipe, which was given to me by my old girl Scout troop leader.  We used to make gingerbread houses in Girl Scouts and then sell them at our church bazaar.  I'd not made one since then, so I thought it was time to see if I remembered how!  I had to make up my own templates.  It was a challenge to make the pieces stay together without sagging... the royal icing works very well because it hardens so quickly, but the gingerbread still sagged some and made me worry it would cave in.  So, my engineer father would be proud... I took an extra piece and cut it in half and then used them as inside supports, as shown in the above photo.

Apparently I didn't get any shots of the house, er, church, before it got decorated.  We attached an ice cream cone to the roof to make a steeple.  I helped the kids do the roof (wafer cookies done like shingles) and then they did most of the rest.

Here is another table... our host mom set up muffin tins filled with candies, pretzels, and other decorative foods!  It was a great idea and gave the kids lots of variety to work with!

Lucy wore her gingerbread outfit.

I showed them how to use candy canes to make runners for a sled.

Cecilia found a gingerbread man with no leg, so she made him a wheelchair out of Cracklin Oat Bran cereal. I did the tree with green frosting piped onto an ice cream cone.

Here's an aerial view... all those M & M's are part of a path.

I like the fish pond on the right side!

Here is our friends' house!

This was a fun way to get together with other homeschoolers, and we still have the gingerbread house now... the girls wanted to be able to eat it, so it now is missing parts of the wall and roof, ha.  I haven't let them eat our gingerbread houses before because we've always made them using a kit leftover from the previous year!