Wow, so for the last three weeks I have been off the radar again.  (We had my parents here for two full weeks over Thanksgiving and I was pretty much banned from the computer except for business schtuff.)

So anyway, at the beginning of Nov we had our date night group get together.  Each time we get together we choose some sort of theme for the activity.  This month Angie & Aaron were in charge and they chose “Traditions”.  Angie’s family had a tradition of building gingerbread houses every year so that’s what we did!

Angie and Aaron built the houses for each couple out of real gingerbread with candy stained glass windows, a front yard tree, and a light attached to the base.  They did an awesome job!

We had a very quick and casual soup and scone dinner before decorating our houses. We wanted to get on to decorating Here’s a shot of our little group. (L-R: Aaron, Brent, Angie, Kaisa, Kelly, Jeremy & Kristin)

This photo shows all the sides of the houses.

I brought my Kitchen Aid mixer up, which is a good thing because Angie’s mixer died right before we all arrived.  We made TONS & TONS of royal icing and marshmallow icing.

And had TONS & TONS of candy on hand.

Once all the icings were made we went to town decorating.

Everyone’s houses turned out just amazing and fun!

Here are some close ups of our little house…

I piped our initials on the heart window…. I couldn’t resist!

Our cute little house made it safely all the way home from Salt Lake City… It even looked so cute in our front room…. until we went shopping with Mom and Dad and left Sadie home alone with it.

I think we walked in on Sadie when she was at this point:

Yes, that would be the roof.  She was moving on to her second course following the devouring of the front yard and tree.  The little twerp even gobbled up a window box. She ate the entire tree, too.  I guess hot glue does pass, too.

We’ll build again next year.  But next time we’ll put the house up higher and out of Sadie’s reach.  So, if you build a gingy house this year, have fun with it and put high out of reach of little paws… both the furry and non furry kinds.

Inky Smiles!