Gingerbread Love

My mom has almost finished putting the lights around the house.

This is the third year that my family and I decorated gingerbread houses together. We go to my aunt and cousin's church in Winston Salem to create our masterpieces. The lady in charge of this has bags of candy and icing laid out over 5 huge tables. You pick what you want to decorate, a small, medium, or large house or a tree, then grab your candy and icing and start working. The best part is when you are finished you can walk away and don't have to clean up anything. This is exceptionally appealing to us because we tend to make a HUGE mess!
It's fun to look back at pictures of our past creations and see how different the houses are from year to year. My mom and I usually use colorful Necco candies to create the roof but this year we decided frosted shredded wheat would be a nice change. We added lights to our house this year. I'll take a picture of it lit up and post that later.
This has turned into a fun Christmas tradition. I hope we are able to continue it for many years to come.
My aunt's house. She was pretty close to being finished at this point. Notice the detail. She even added an overhang at the front door.
Jennifer was working hard on her house. It turned out really cute. She used Necco's on her roof.
Caroline put Necco's all over her roof and then decided she didn't like it so she changed it to frosted shredded what. Her house was very cute especially after some third grade children got in on the design.
Here is my gingerbread tree. This is the second year that I have decorated a tree. I always think it is a good idea until I sit down to start and then my mind goes blank. I do like the way this one turned out. I used M&M's and gumballs on the tree. I tore apart some sour string candy and wrapped that around certain spots. I love the pretzel star on top of the tree and the gingerbread people infront of the tree. The end result was much cuter than I could have imagined.