delicious little houses

Yesterday was, in a word, delicious.

The weather was beautiful for a woods-walk and the kids and I had a lot of fun gathering materials for an upcoming project.  When we returned to the house I roasted some chestnuts, made hot chocolate, and started whipping up some royal frosting for gingerbread houses.  (It was already getting dark, so please excuse the quality of these photos.)

Instead of gingerbread, we made mini versions using graham crackers.  I built the houses for my 3 youngest and myself and set out a buffet of candies for decorating them.

I let the kids decorate them however they wanted and we ended up with houses like this:

and this.  (I love the gingerbread marshmallow man just squashed into the side)

My teenager got into the action and not only made his own house, but a house with a chicken coop, a flag, a sidewalk, and even a gingerbread man on a ladder with a hammer in his hand!  Holy buckets!

I was so impressed, though we did tease him about his entrepreneurial chickens who seemed to have opened a co-op.

Best part, naturally, is that they got to eat their masterpieces afterwards.

Delicious.

Hope you have a fun start to the week!