Gingerbread houses!

*warning: lots of pictures of cuteness!

I had this {great} idea last week to make a village with the kids gingerbread houses. yes, it's a fun idea.
but, honestly, it was mostly to make the 4 finished houses seem less *messy* when they were displayed in the house.

so...bailey and sawyer painted the base to our village last week:

{ok, ok. maybe i just wanted to take pictures of him in his underwear... :-)}

today "the gift" was a gingerbread house!
i bought just the pieces - 4 sets of them - and then bags of candy.

there were definitely some moments of frustration trying to get the houses to stay together.
we put them together after church and before "rest time"...

we let them sit during rest time and decorated them after we all had some quiet time.
we went through 2 bags of powdered sugar to make the royal icing to hold the houses together.
and 3 tubs of vanilla icing to put all the candy on!

concentration...

there might have been some candy/icing eaten {i might feel ill right now from all i ate...}

i loved rebekah's wreath. she is so creative! she HAD to have a wreath so she took some icing...put green food coloring in it...and made her own wreath!

sawyer had a ball.

"a Christmas tree in the window"

the village is on our coffee table in our game room {living room}.
i found sawyer in there right after bathtime :-)

how could i say no??

we have had the best weekend...between "friend friday", bible study fri nite, the water walk, a party at the panter's, serving at church and gingerbread houses {and a VERY special candle tonight that i'll talk about later!}

ending the weekend VERY filled up {and tired...but i'm focusing on the good parts...}