It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood

The gingerbread neighborhood.

Sunday we visited the Royal Park Hotel to see their giant gingerbread house. A little inspiration for our upcoming build-a-thon. What a cute thing to take some time to explore. It was fun watching the surprise in the kids eyes as they discovered each thing on the house that really was made out of candy. Of course, Q tried to eat a little bit that was laying around....blech!

Yesterday, after being fully inspired we invited Oma and Aunt Cathleen over for some constructing of our own. After last year's debacle involving 2 large houses that had to be shared I decided on mini, graham cracker houses for everyone this year. And, being fully prepared for chaos and catastrophe I hotglued those babies together. The royal icing is always the bane of my existence on gingerbread building day. The heavy candies always slide and people cry when their master pieces fall apart.

This year we used candy, cotton, hot glue, glue sticks and even rubber cement to assemble our miniature town. Next year I'll remember to buy bottles of white glue instead of glue sticks.

Overall I think everyone was pleased with their tiny houses and I'm fairly certain more candy was eaten from the bowls before it even made it on the house. And, I'm pretty glad glue stick glue is non-toxic....

Welcome to our neighborhood.