Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Countdown to Christmas!

We have started our Christmas traditions already! After all, there's only 23 days left until the big day! Today, we made "ginger-graham" houses. I remember making these when I was young and they are easier to make than the usual gingerbread houses, and the kids can do alot of the work, with a little help from you, of course. Below is a pic of A's house. Here is K's finished product. (I made the tree) :)
Here is A sprinkling pink "snow" on her house.

This is a picture of our homemade advent "calendar".



Here's a quick tutorial on how to make the graham cracker houses.
You will need:
empty pint milk containers (we used empty half and half containers)
Frosting (to use as glue and decorating)
Graham Crackers
Various candies and other edibles for decorating such as...
spice drops, m&m's, smarties, nonpareils, jimmies, sprinkes, etc...
Place your cartons on a safe work surface...it's gonna be messy! Use the frosting as glue and place sheets of graham cracker around the carton to resemble a house. You can look at the above pictures for an idea. If you have cake decorating supplies, you can use those to pipe frosting on the crackers to make doors and windows. If not, stores sell ready made frosting in a can that comes with tips for decorating. After your "house is assembled, decorate as you'd like.
It's alot of fun and very easy.
We don't eat alot of candy around here so, decorating with all the goodies was quite fun for my little ones. Now, the trick is to get them to save their house for decoration! :)



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

awe...those are so cute!! That is always so much fun!!!:)It's so hard to believe that Christmas is so close!!

Sarah said...

I love that your advent cal is homeade

Jenny said...

The boys want to do gingerbread houses...I might try your graham cracker houses instead! They look very easy to do and turned out really cute!

We did the EXACT SAME THING for advent calendars a few years ago. I had seen them at our neighborhood Christmas craft fair for like $10 a piece and thought cute but no way was I going to pay that (I needed 3 at the time.) So I went home and made them instead! The boys really enjoyed them...I'm sure your little ones will enjoy them, too!