Tips for making Gingerbread Houses with your darling children

1. Imagine how lovely it will be to spend time with your children all Joanna Gaines style. Target, Publix, and Kroger have “easy to construct” kits these days, so you should definitely go ahead and buy yourself one too. 

   
   
   

2. Turn on some Christmas music! Pour yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.

   
   

3. Pull the contents out of the boxes and neatly arrange the supplies for the perfect photo-op. 

   
   

4. Call the kids to the table and BE SURE to take a photo of those early smiles.

   
   

5. Watch your kids unwrap gingerbread house pieces with excitement. Your teenager may let out a sigh, but don’t worry, this is just his way of communicating these days. 

   
   

6. Next, watch one of them accidentally drop the side of their roof on the floor from across the table

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7. Try to knead the icing bag the same child has already cut wide open to help make the repairs to the roof, gently telling your child that theirs is not ruined. 

   
   

8. Observe Angry Child make rude comments to siblings out of frustration. Then, moments later, watch siblings easily construct their houses while commenting, “this is so easy” and “did you know that so-and-so’s mom gets the preassembled houses from Amazon?”

   
   

9. Turn off the Christmas music. It will be too loud at this point. 

   
   

10. Survey the mess. Remind yourself “it’s worth it”

    
    

11. Send Angry Child to their room to cool off while you take deep breaths in the corner of the kitchen, approximately 6 inches or so from the wine cabinet. 

    
    

12. Remind other children to be kind and to not eat all the candy...gently, of course. 

    
    

13. Walk to Angry Child’s room to try and get them to come back and try again. In the meantime, you can expect that your other children will completely finish decorating their houses. 

    
    

14. Following that, it’s time to construct the Angry Child’s gingerbread house yourself, even though you’ve already told yourself and them this is a learning opportunity, and, after all, their character development is important. 

    
    

15. Survey the mess. Remind yourself “they will only be young once”...or something like that. 

    
    

16. Call the siblings of the finished gingerbread houses back into the kitchen to help clean up. Complaining and whining expected. 

    
    

17. Finally, pull out your very own gingerbread house. Realize you mistakenly picked up Elsa’s Gingerbread Ice Castle. Laugh..a big ole' belly laugh if you can.

    
    

18. Begin construction just as Angry Child finishes decorating their house and is now calm. 

    
    

19. Watch in amazement as your kids unexpectedly say nice things about each other’s houses. 

    
    

20. Finally, try to accept and embrace the imperfection and chaos of it all. And remind yourself to get the pre-assembled houses from Amazon next year.