Gingerbread men

Today officially marks the beginning of winter break for the children. I decided that we would do something for every day of the week for the first week just to make it special. To go with each activity, we would watch a Christmassy movie.

For Monday, the activity is to make gingerbread men. The movie we are going to watch is Home Alone.

It was fun to make the gingerbread men. Jennifer helped with the mix then she got to roll out and cut the first half of the dough. Jesse got to roll out and cut out the cookies, too. It was really cute watching them create their own gingerbread men.

The icing, however, proved to be a challenge. Usually, I buy the icing at the store, but hubby forgot to buy it while he was out and we were not able to buy any. The box of the mix had a recipe on the side for making homemade icing. I wasn’t sure if I was up to that. I have never made homemade icing. I even asked hubby to do it instead and he asked why. “I’ve never made icing before!” I said. “What if I mess it up?”

“It’s easy,” he said, then he went over the ingredients and said to just follow the directions.

Retreating to the kitchen, I figured, what the heck? I’ll give it a try. So I made up the icing – and I must point out that I had to use more water than what it said to use on the box. In fact, I just added water until it was actual icing and something that could be drizzled over cookies.

Next, we decorated our gingerbread men. I told the kids that they could each have 2 cookies. They each decorated their own cookies. Once again, cuteness overload while watching them dress their cookies up with icing. We didn’t have any candies or decorative goodies for our gingerbread men, though. So we just ate them with icing. Yummy!

Here’s a pic of the kids with their cookies. Mine are in the foreground. They couldn’t stop licking at the icing. I had to smile about that; I guess I done good.