YOU CAN'T CATCH ME, I'M THE GINGERBREAD MAN!

This weekend, we decided to get into the Christmas spirit by putting together a gingerbread house using a kit from Deutschland. Isabelle may have eaten half of it before we even started putting it together, but she left all the orange gummies for decorating use (no one ever eats those, right?). Liv did not approve.

We used our great high school German skills to understand that we were supposed to make our own icing, or maybe it was simply that there wasn't any in this box. Liv bullied Isabelle into using this recipe and mixing it until her arms fell off. Every other time we've made a gingerbread house, we've used that little bag of so-called-icing it comes with. That stuff does not work. We literally need the force of an ironman and an hour of our time to get one of the sides to hold together.


Now this stuff works! The house held together almost instantly, and we only had to use a little, leaving plenty left for Isabelle to eat. Liv didn't approve of that either.

We covered the roof with coconut "snow" and felt like the perfect weathermen (Isabelle felt like God, but Liv's Christian). Gummy church bells on the top and a snazzy nonpareil border later and we were proud of our ginger baby (see what we did there?). And since we doubled the icing recipe, there was still tons left for Isabelle to eat. This time, Liv skipped her annoyance stage and simply shot her with the piping bag. She's still washing that stuff out of her hair. But don't worry, Liv is, too.