The house that Jack built

Wait, no one in our family is named Jack!  Silly me!

Last year we did little gingerbread houses at a friend's house, so this year I decided to take the tradition on ourselves.  I learned some very valuable lessons about making gingerbread houses.  (Yes, they're made from graham crackers instead of real home-baked gingerbread, but they're gingerbread flavored graham crackers, so I will say without qualm that they are indeed, gingerbread houses.)

Lessons learned whilst making gingerbread houses:

1. When the icing recipe tells you to add 2 tsp. of water per 1/2 c. of powered sugar, don't be a dummy and add 2 Tbs.  You'll be adding all your powdered sugar as well as extra cornstarch to compensate for this error.
2. Assemble houses well ahead of time before you want to decorate them.  If you procrastinate house assembly, the icing will not have hardened and you cannot apply decorative embellishments.  As a result, your 7-year-old will spit acid at you because life comes to a screeching halt when gingerbread house-decorating plans crumble before her very eyes (meaning they had to be postponed until after school the following day).
3. A half of a graham cracker is NOT square, regardless what it says on the back of the box.  It's impossible to make a cube out of rectangles.
4. It's a very good thing I did not major in architecture or construction management.
5. I should've opted out of the gingerbread flavored graham crackers and gone with run-of-the-mill graham crackers.  They flavored ones taste kind of scary.  The gingerbread-man-shaped marshmallows that are gingerbread flavored, however, have a very pleasant gingerbread taste. 

I think those are enough details to tell you how educational this house-making process has become.  Here is a dazzling picture with my three little designers posing behind their award-winning creations (well, their mother told them they were all worthy of first place!).

Mine is the one with Fruit Loop shingles, Isaac's has a swimming pool of excess icing, Alayna opted for additional landscaping, and I was simply surprised Maren's house survived long enough to take a picture of it.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!