Dream House

As in, "keep dreaming, because you don't get to eat that."

Poor poor children. Forced to play with candy and cookies and frosting...only to be told that the resulting creations are off limits.

In keeping with our family Black Friday tradition, we stayed far away from the retail mania and started to construct theoretically edible Christmas cheer.

We did both the house and the tree from $9.99 kits from Michael's. Everything included - appropriately shaped cookies, candy and frosting mix.

After an unfortunate frosting bag incident during the creation of the tree (apparently I didn't thin it out enough and it came bursting out the side of the bag...um, yuck), we resorted to "spray can" frosting. I must admit that, although it is mighty entertaining to spray frosting out of a can, the frosting itself is not completely appropriate for gingerbread-based construction. Too fluffy.

This resulted in some unfortunate slippage of the roof of the house (if you look closely there is a huge dent in the middle - somewhat covered with gumdrops).

The spray frosting also sort of broke the budget at $4.50 a can (and we used 2).

But overall, I think the result is quite spectacular. And those happy kids are surely worth a few overpriced cans of off-limits frosting.

Of course, the kids were careful to ration their decorations such that there is a generously heaping pile of candies left over.

Smart kids :)