Confection construction, anyone?

Now that it's Advent, my mind is buzzing with all the ideas of things I need to do before December 25th.  I have shopping, gift wrapping and decorating to do along with a host of other things.  Despite all that, I'm determined to make sure the kids get to do all the fun things they like to do this time of year.  We have ornaments to make and decorate and gingerbread houses to build.

This year I have decided that I'm simply not going to spend $10 for a pre-fab gingerbread house that comes with goopy icing and crappy candy.  A few years ago a friend of mine from high school invited my girls to come to her house to make gingerbread houses.  Those houses were the best we ever made.  They were simply graham crackers decorated with a wide assortment of candies that were as pretty as they were yummy.

I wanted to make houses like that last year but I caved and brought the pre-fab village at Target because I wasn't sure I could cut graham crackers, and I also didn't have any on hand at the time.  This year I decided that I need to see if I could actually cut crackers without making them crumble.  Thanks to a quick Google search, I found just the tutorial I needed.  I grabbed the box of graham crackers, the cutting board and a sharp knife and got to work.  I'm delighted that I was able to cut the crackers with no issues. Sure there were a few cracker casualties as I learned how to gently hold and cut the crackers, but I'm thrilled with the end result--nicely cut crackers that will be the fronts and backs of our "gingerbread" houses this year.  Now I need to buy candies and figure out when I should have the girls make their houses.  Perhaps we'll do this project this weekend.