One of the things Ryan has wanted to do the last couple of Christmas' is to build a gingerbread house. One of the things I have grown to dread about Christmas are gingerbread houses. Here is the story why -- Two years ago I was a mean mommy and ignored his requests and we didn't do one. Last year I bought him a kit. He wanted to do it all himself and it was hard to get a gingerbread house to stay together until the "glue" got hard and it kept falling down. This resulted in a frustrated kid. He finally agreed to help, and was happy when it was finished, but getting to together was a chore for all of us. Now, this year Ryan was again asking to make a gingerbread house. I wasn't sure what we were going to do about that until I saw an ad in one of the free magazines published by a city near ours. They were offering a free gingerbread house kit for anybody who entered their "make a gingerbread contest". So, we went and got a kit which turned out to have pieces to make a HUGE gingerbread house and the pieces were all homemade and therefore weren't cut perfectly. I was a little worried how it would turn until until I read the directions which said to think outside the box and do something different than the typical gingerbread house/ Santa's workshop. That gave me the idea to do a gingerbread tent which, fortunately, Ryan loved. We only needed to "glue" a couple of pieces together and they pretty much stood on their own anyway. Then Ryan got to decorate away. This is what we ended up with. . .
Since it was for a contest Ryan requested help because he wanted to win. So, it was a team effort amongst all 3 of us.
Our gingerbread tent didn't win, but we did get honorable mention and a picture of the gingerbread house was published in the magazine. Ryan was thrilled -- to him he won!
Gingerbread Tent take 2
We had a LOT of pieces left over after making the first gingerbread tent, so a couple of weeks later Ryan wanted to do another one. This one he did almost entirely on his own!
Ryan had a blast making both of these gingerbread tents! Still not my favorite holiday project, but definitely less disastrous than the last couple of years!
