I am trying to make this a family tradition for us. It is a lot of work but its one of those things that I want to do. I do make the gingerbread from scratch and I love how it makes my house smell so good. This year we invited my sister and her family over to join us in the construction of these architecture sweets. I have found just the right recepies for all the materials that it makes it easy for even the younger kids to make it work. The trick is to cut out the house shapes directly onto the cookie sheet and not move it until after its been baked. This is an activity that everyone likes to do. The dads try to make their the most detailed or biggest, the littles try to put as much candy as possible on theirs and the middle aged ones just want them to be beautiful. My rule is that each person can do whatever they want. they can have total ownership of their gingerbread creation. I think they get a huge sense of satisfaction when I only help when THEY ask, otherwise its all them.
My sisters kids did just want to eat them as soon as they were finished and while they can eat them my kids couldn't fathom why they would want to ruin their creation so quickly. As long as they only touched their own house I didn't really care. Thankfully my kids wanted to enjoy theirs a little longer.
They can snack on their own houses all they want during the season as long as they only snack on theirs and don't touch anyone elses. This is the hardest part. I often find someone sad that something on their house is suspiciously missing.
For Peter's school class we were supposed to talk of a tradition. We brought pictures of our last years gingerbread houses and brought the one he made this year. We even brought little gingersnap cookies made from the left over gingerbread. I had all the kids smell cookies before they ate them. I was trying to help them experience how the house smells when we do the gingerbread houses. They were all in heaven.
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