Grammy on the Go
By Karen Shadrach
Making gingerbread houses with your grandchildren can become a fun tradition that they will look forward to doing with you each year. Maybe you are thinking of building a house made completely out of gingerbread, which is fine if you have the time and expertise to share, but I am talking about a simple, non-edible house that can be assembled in a few hours.
These box house forms can be made with the children, or made beforehand to be all ready for decorating. Any small sturdy box will do, or houses can be assembled from pieces of strong cardboard. Using a glue gun is ok, as these houses will not be eaten! The easiest house (one which they use in kindergarten classes) is made from cutting the bottom third off the bottom of a quart-sized milk carton. Cover a baking sheet or large piece of cardboard with foil then attach your house on with glue. Gluing is recommended so that your house remains stable during the decorating process. The remainder of the area is your “yard” to place a gummy walkway, pond, or ice cream cone trees.
We save all of our leftover candy from Halloween for house decorations, and also purchase other decorative candy, cereal or pretzels, and place everything out in bowls for the grandkids to choose and create their own unique gingerbread house.
Icing is used for your candy glue! It can be purchased from the store (buy several containers of plain white frosting), or you can whip up a large batch from scratch. Next, separate some of the icing into small bowls and add food coloring to use for landscaping trees or lakes.
Before you begin, I would recommend placing a disposable plastic table cloth on your table or floor. Clean-up will be so much easier, as you can just carefully fold it up and toss it in the trash!
Begin by covering one side of the house at a time with the icing, and then attach your candy of choice. Only do one side at a time to prevent drying of the icing or the candies will not stick as well.
The end product will be something they will be very proud of, and it will smell so sugary sweet! We use them as centerpieces throughout the holidays.
This is a great project to use up some of the grandkids’ large amount of acquired Halloween 
candy. For example, Skittles make colorful stone sides of houses, chimneys and walkways. Kit Kats look like house wood siding or roof shingles. Nerds are also good for covering houses or decorating trees. Let the grandkids use their imaginations and anything goes… as long as it’s sweet!
Some things that we purchased (or already had in our kitchen) as extras to the Halloween candy were miniature marshmallows, pretzels, ice cream sugar cones, licorice sticks, cereals (Cheerios, Fruit Loops, Lucky Charms), M&M’s, Gummy Bears, Goldfish and cookie sprinkles.
To make a decorated tree, place a sugar cone upside down and cover it with green icing. Then, adorn with a few lighter-weighing candies so that they will not fall off. Nerds and cereal are great for this. Add another tree to your yard if you have room!
Ponds are made by spreading blue icing into whatever shape you wish, then add a border and finally add some Swedish Fish or Goldfish crackers.
Using icing as your glue, you can help the grandkids make a pretzel reindeer to place in their landscapes. Take a large marshmallow and stick pretzel sticks into the bottom for legs, then place two smaller ones on top for its antlers. Also popular is to make a snowman by placing 2-3 marshmallows on top of each other. Add two pretzel sticks for arms and an icing face with string licorice scarf!
If you still have a lot of leftover candy, you can pack it up in air-tight containers and save it for next year’s ‘gingerbread’ house!
Photos courtesy Karen Shadrach
