Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Mini Gingerbread Houses


For years now, it's been our tradition for me to surprise the children with a homemade gingerbread house to enjoy as a special treat after the Christmas Eve service.  Of course, they know it's coming, so it's not really a surprise, but I try to bake and decorate it when no one is around, or when the children are napping or occupied, so it just appears on the kitchen counter with no warning.

This year, on a whim, instead of cutting the gingerbread out around our usual template, I cut six tiny gingerbread houses using the template provided by Not Martha for the little houses meant to be draped over the rims of mugs of hot chocolate...


...omitting the backdoor, since ours won't be going over mugs...


...and adding windows, using a butter knife, and the large end of a pastry tip as a cutter...


...so that each of the children would have a tiny, teddy graham inhabited house...


...to decorate themselves.


I would have loved to have had it together enough to have made enough houses for the children to decorate with their friends instead of sugar cookies, but I also really wanted to leave time for a pre-Christmas nap.  As it was, this project, while only being slightly more labor intensive than a single, normal size house, definitely upped the decorating mess factor.

It was a tremendously fun, but best done after the company had gone, when a sprinkle or two (or two hundred) on the floor didn't matter, and Mom...


...had had that nap, and was back to being a well rested, carefree, lover of Christmas fun.  Keeping in mind the wise words of Augustine - Our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in Christ.

A Very Merry and Well Rested Christmas to all of you.

3 comments:

Ticia said...

They're cute, I wanted to do gingerbread houses this year, but we had so much sickness this year....

Phyllis said...

My kids always look forward to decorating Gingerbread houses, too. A lovely family tradition.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I love your houses - people who can mass-produce them always make me envious. Looking forward to more posts from your wonderful blog!