Decorating a Gingerbread House

So I bought one of those Gingerbread house kits from the store the other day because I thought it would be a great family project. The following conversation took place.

"Look Philip, I got a gingerbread house kit!"
"Cool, I love gingerbread. Are we all going to do it together?"
"Yea, I thought that would be fun and then we can use it for a decoration."
"You mean we are not going to eat it?"
"Well, I wanted to keep it as a decoration."
"But gingerbread is to eat!"
"So we are just going to decorate it all and then eat it?"
"Yep!"
Using my newly developed skills I decide not to continue the argument, but instead silently mourned my new gingerbread house. I decided to try to enjoy the activity and not worry about what was going to happen to the house after we decorated it.

So the three of us gathered around the table and:
I assembled the walls with icing (not with hot glue like originally planned).

Ethan very carefully decorated the Christmas tree and two little gingerbread people that stand in front of the house. We had to repeatedly tell him that the candy was not to eat (even though dad was sneaking candy behind his back!) We finally got out some mini M&Ms so that he could eat something while he decorated.

I iced the house while Philip and Ethan placed the candies.

I even made a walkway so Ethan could decorate without restriction!

Ethan poses with his gingerbread house:Don't you just love that smile?

Here is the finished house:
So later that night I turn to Philip and ask, "Aren't you going to eat the house now?"
"Not now!"
"What do you mean not now? I thought you wanted to make the house and then eat it!"
"I do want to eat it, after Christmas!"
"That's when I want you to eat it too!"

Philip thought I wanted to save the house for years to come and I thought Philip wanted to eat the house that night. It was one of the funny miscommunications that we could laugh about the night that it happened.

I posted all the pictures from our first family craft project on our flickr page.