If you follow us on instagram (follow us @andersruff), you probably know we were up to gingerbread house making yesterday. We were pretty “snowed in” here, so this was a great Christmas eve eve eve day activity!

Last year, we started making “gingerbread houses” with the kids. I thought age 4 and 7 was a good age to start with my boys.  Well, Pierson (4) didn’t last and Jeffrey (7) did great… but this year they improved so much!

This is such an easy and fun way to spend time with your little ones doing something “sweet” together and being creative. (I am always looking for ways for them to explore their creativity).

The biggest help to keep this “less messy” was sorting out the candies in dishes, as well as my favorite icing tubes by Kuhn Rikon….

You can find these Kuhn Rikon icing bottles here.

The boys wore their cute personalized aprons (recognize these from our North Pole Christmas photoshoot?)

I love Pierson’s (short lasting) concentration…..

Pierson ended up eating more candy than he decorated with… which is fine! I wanted the kids to have fun and direct their own construction…. Here was P’s final “gingerbread fort” as he called it…

Jeffrey got pretty into it this year,….

… but his efforts were a little ruined by Cotton’s sweet tooth. (Our Jack Russell)….. while we were out sledding, Cotton got up on the table and tore through some sweets (and foil) along the way! Oops!

J made a version of our own new house…. he did a pretty good job!

I decided to use Pirouettes to make a Log Cabin style home! So fun and easy!

I posted this on instagram and asked if you guys had any more suggestions for what to add….

A wreath, of course!  So I used licorice rope to make a little bow!

Here was my final house… I could have added coconut to the foil for snow, but didn’t want to go out in the cold to go to the grocery store 😉

Then, we went sledding in our yard! Merry Christmas Eve Eve, everyone!