Thursday, October 30, 2008

Our "Perfect" Gingerbread House!

Since I already admitted to my lack of interior designing skills, I'll let you in on another little secret.... I'm a bit of a perfectionist. There, I said it! Being a perfectionist isn't always a bad thing.... in fact it served me quite well in my school years! It's not such a great quality however when trying to have "fun" with the kids, or trying to "craft", or "create" with them. And being a perfectionist actually adds quite a bit more stress than necessary when trying to "create". It's something I have to work very hard on controlling and keeping at bay.

So I was quite proud of myself last week when we decided to spend a Family night constructing a Halloween Gingerbread House I picked up at Michael's, after seeing pictures on my friend, Mary's blog of her and her family's Gingerbread House.

I made the icing before the kids got home from school, and got everything prepped and ready to go, so after homework and dinner we could get right to work!

We assembled the house quite easily, and put it aside so the walls could "set." After dinner we got right to work. I actually read the instructions, step-by-step, to the kiddos and let them each take a turn decorating! I realized that this wasn't going to be the "picture perfect" Gingerbread house, when almost I noticed almost immediately that my icing that was the "perfect" consistency hours earlier, had now gotten a little watery. It was too late at this point in the evening, to try to fix it. So I completely backed off, and although the kids still tried to follow the "script", I let them go for it! We had a great night together, and this project that could have been extremely stressful for me, turned out to be soooo much more fun! I guess I'll have to restrain my inner perfectionist more frequently if it means less stress!



Caiden really concentrating!


When we finished following the "instructions", we still had three sides of the house, some icing and some candy left over, so I each of the kids got to decorate a side however they wanted! Fun!


Crazy kids!!!

4 comments:

Jenny G said...

Makayla! It's so nice to hear from you. Now we have an easy way to keep in touch. Your kids are adorable . I'm glad your family is doing well. I can't believe you've been married for almost 10 years.

Priemer Family said...

Hey! I love the gingerbread house. Austin thought it was so cool! I am like you....I always want everything to be perfect and tend to forget about making it "fun" instead! Glad you had a good time!

JKLMNPeterson said...

I am so that way too. I want it to be perfect and it is so hard to stand back and let them do it. The truth is it is so much better when they do it.

Wethe Family said...

I loved all those pictures. Your kids are the cutest. See you soon.