Gingerbread houses

As I told more friends, family and neighbors about our gingerbread house plans, I realized that most people thought I was making gingerbread and assembling houses. Ha! No. Not even close.

What we made is more accurately called "making candy houses." We use empty cardboard milk cartons as "houses" taped down onto a cardboard base. Perfect for 3-year-olds and pretty darn fun for any age!

We made these last year as well--a tradition I'm enjoying sharing with the kids, as I have such fond memories of making gingerbread candy houses with my family growing up. (Sidenote: It was fun to back to last year's post and see the difference from this year. I don't think TJ ate nearly as much candy this year!)

Without further ado, our night of candy house making!

The raw ingredients...A LOT of sugar.

The group hard at work. Kathy came again (part of our second generation tradition is doing this together!) and brought her "little sister" and her "little sister"'s brother. We also had TJ's buddy Rowan over. Ed was at a brewery function.

Jojo thought the whole thing was pretty cool. Especially the candy. His favorites were Mike & Ike's. 

Rowan working hard.

TJ frosting his house. And sampling the frosting.

Jojo really had a ball. And here you can see evidence of the handfuls of Mike & Ike's he ate on his tongue.

TJ dipping into the green frosting. Maybe he ate less candy this year because he was too busy eating frosting?!

TJ's finished house. He and Rowan really did a nice job. They did most of the frosting themselves, and then loaded up with candy. Similar to last year, notice the huge pile of loose candy dumped in the yard.

I gave Jojo a little house, just to keep him occupied. I did help him decorate it a bit, but he mostly just ate.

Jojo's finished house, complete with a green sugar yard, courtesy of TJ.

I felt a little bad dropping Rowan off at 9 that night with a belly full of sugar. Not sure how he slept, but my boys slept just fine. Must have been the crash after the sugar high...

Here are all five houses, complete!

Considering we had two adults and three kids 4 and under, the whole night went really smoothly! Can't wait for next year...