Gingerbread Houses

We had our friends the Dunlap family over to do gingerbread houses with us.  And by gingerbread houses, I actually mean graham cracker houses.  I've never made gingerbread and I probably never will.  I'm too cheap to buy the gingerbread house kits in the store and I hope I always will be.

 When we were first married, Jaron's mom gave me a fabulous royal icing recipe that we use:

3 egg whites at room temperature

1/2 t cream of tartar

4 c powdered sugar

Beat for 7-10 minutes. Keep bowl covered under a wet cloth so the frosting doesn't dry out.

 Poor Eli seems to have inherited his mother's "my eyes are always half-closed for pictures" syndrome.

 Notice how sparse Gracen's house is?  Yeah, she pretty much ate candy the whole time.

 Alden and Eli's finished products:

 Gracen's and my finished products:

 Since the boys were really good at not eating much candy while they were building, I let them nibble on the houses after dinner.  After a minute, I turned around and this was going on:

 At first, I was so sad because I'd just cleaned up a huge mess from making the houses and the dinner mess.  But then I was happy that I was only going to have to have gingerbread houses around for one night and I encouraged them to go to town.  The aftermath spread from the kitchen to the bathroom to the living room furniture and took me all evening to clean up but it's all over now!