How A Gingerbread House Is Supposed To Look

After weeks of begging from my son, we finally bought a gingerbread house kit. I figured since we were "cheating" with the kit, the process would be fairly easy.

This is how the box showed the finish product:

After:

1) Purchasing the countless other ingredients instructed in small print on the box (cornstarch, powdered sugar, etc) (even though the big print states "Everything's Included!")

2) Reading the instructions to learn the afore-mentioned ingredients are really not needed,

3) Discovering the instructions said it takes one hour for the icing for the walls to dry & two hours for the roof icing to dry, thus

4) Disappointing our son because there are only so many hours after school therefore evening number one was just spent in "construction",

5) Re-moistening the icing (which hardens within minutes) because "gingerbread-house-night-number-2!!" turned into "horrible-day-at-school-thus-punishment-in-the-room",

6) Taking at least 45 minutes cutting little gum drops in half, green, gummy, leaf-shaped candies into something that is supposed to resemble "evergreen leaves", and a little red bow out of a flattened red gum drop,

7) Giving up on trying to flatten gum drops into "rectangular window shapes" because gummies don't stay flat...they ooze back into their original shape no matter how much pressure you apply with a rolling pin or how many curse words are said,

8) Finally sitting down to decorate the house on night #3 with both kids only to discover that the icing simply won't come out of the decorating tube (& adding water only makes it easier for it to squirt out of the back of the tube & onto the floor & the dog),

9) Releasing into what is, scooping the icing out of the bowl with my hands, glopping it onto the gingerbread house & letting the kids have at it with applying whatever candy they want in whatever format they want....

We discovered the fun in making a gingerbread house and revealed what a gingerbread house should look like:

Perfect.