Gingerbread House

In Relief Society a couple of weeks before our ward Christmas party we were invited to provide table decorations in a centerpiece contest.  I smiled to myself and thought that would be a joke. I am just not at all good at decorating anything.  (Just ask our tiny granddaughter who was living with us once and said, "Grammie, you should decorate your house for Christmas."  This was when we were still living in the log cabin.  Well, I have not improved very much...except to throw around some blankets and afghans I have made, plus we have put paintings by family and friends on our walls, but none of that is Christmas.

Well, as the days went by, I thought, "Why the heck not?!  I can do something."

We were invited to bring a side dish, rolls, or dessert.  I decided to make Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese and Sixty Minute Rolls.  If the ideas spinning around in my head panned out, I could bring dessert, too.

We happened to stop at Joann on our way home from Thanksgiving at my sister's home.  There, at the very front of the store, was a table of Gingerbread House kits!  It was a kit.  It had to be easy, right?!  So we took it home with us.  Now the wheels were really spinning.

First I made some nice cut out sugar cookies and iced them with Candy Melts.  They did not look good but they tasted fine.  My sister had given me some tree cookie cutters so I cut out trees and put green candy melts melted on them.  The round cookies had chocolate candy melts.  We had some small heart silicon molds so I made red and white candy melt hearts.  Next I made some Reese's Peanut Butter Cup trees.  If you look carefully in the pictures you will find them.  So cute.  So chocolate peanut buttery.  Quite popular!

When we got to the party we laid down a long sheet of wide aluminum foil, put the Hansel and Gretel house down with mini-marshmallow snowbanks and trees all around.  Then all the cookies were laid out.

It was fun.  Dear One helped a great deal with the set up.  AND...we won the Most Creative prize.  You should have seen the children (and adults) at the end of the night scarfing up the treats!