Gingerbread Village of Doom

I'm pretty sure I haven't made a gingerbread house since I was a kid, and so it seemed like an awesome idea to get a gingerbread house kit when we were raiding Michael's for deals two Saturdays ago.  You could get one big house, a village, a gingerbread tree, or a gingerbread man.  Anna chose the village.  Next time, I'll know better.

So we decided to do the village today as a fun afternoon activity.  You should know that 1) I don't bake or decorate cakes or pastries, and 2) I am not an artsy person.

To start, you had to prepare the icing from a mix they provided, just adding water.  They said to use a mixer on low for a minute, then medium for two more minutes until the icing was the consistency of toothpaste.  I had the mixer on low for all of five seconds, and my kitchen counter was subsequently covered in icing mix powder.  It apparently likes to float.  After trying it in a larger bowl thinking that would help, I gave up and mixed it by hand.  I should have taken a picture, but I was covered in powder and wasn't really thinking about it at the time.

Next, we had to assemble the houses.  First, I would like to point out that the pictures on the box are larger than the actual houses.  Mix icing, a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and tiny gingerbread pieces, and you might be able to imagine the chaos that ensued.  The gingerbread pieces were in five sheets (one for each building) that you had to snap apart.  There was also no guide to which pieces were roof or sides, therefore our chapel has a "skylight" on one side because the wall doesn't reach the roof, and the icing had set on most of the pieces before I figured that out.  And at this point, I was almost ready to quit and make Seth finish it with them when he got home!

You will also notice on the box that not all of the icing is white.  Some is green and some is red.  Some coloring packets were included, and you were supposed to mix some icing and the colors in separate bowls for use in decorating.  Considering the state of my kitchen, my kids, and my sanity, I decided to skip that step.

The final step was the decorating, and this was actually the best part.  Gum drops, gum drop trees, and sprinkles were included.  Anna wanted to decorate the doors like they had done on the box.  That ended after one door because those colored dots are, in fact, round sprinkles.  If you have ever tried to place tiny sprinkles one by one, you can guess why we stopped :)  Lizzie wanted to drop sprinkles on "snow" roofs and pick the colors of the gum drops.  So while ours don't really look as fancy as the ones on the box, I think they turned out pretty well, although I don't think any of them meet building codes.  If we do this next year, though, we will get one big house, not five little ones!