It takes a family...

to raise a village....

a gingerbread village that is.

We've made gingerbread houses for Christmas for a long time.
The tradition started when we lived in Tucson. As a primary presidency we made baked and cut out gingerbread housed for each of our teachers using Glenda Wilkes' recipe and pattern and and then hosted a dinner for them and their spouses. After some sumptuous soup, recipe courtesy of Sharon Bell, we broke out the frosting and candy and got down to business.
It was so much fun. It was really interesting to watch the couples.
The guys really got into it. Builders had elaborate designs on the house itself while landscapers had relatively plain houses but fabulous yards.

When we moved from Tucson we made them as a family.
In past years we made one house for every two people.

Last year Amy and Jordan had their own house as well as Aaron and Celisa and a few more for friends and family that we invited over. I'm not sure we have ever done it alone... enjoying the process with friends is just as important as the finish product... well looking at our houses maybe it's more important.

Last year I saw the above village on Amy's friend Kirsten's blog. (You should really take a closer look, it's amazing!) I decided then and there that a village would solve our problem of having too many houses sitting around with no where to put them. So this year I did a quick internet search of gingerbread villages to get some ideas before I cut out pieces for our very own village:

Complete with pond and stream... although they turned from blue to green when I got the syrup a little too hot and it scorched.
(Blue +yellow=green)
It has a church, two small houses and one tallish oneThe houses themselves are not very decorated because we ran short on frosting
and, well, I was too tired to make more....

We also forgot to put lights in the buildings and around the town... oops

Here is Santa ice skating on the frozen mossy snow (coconut) covered pond just past the bridge over the stream.

It was fun to do and I think it turned out fairly well but

I guess I should have looked at the Curtis' it a little closer before doing ours.

I don't know that our village or house will ever look that good.
I guess it gives us some room for improvement next year.
Maybe we'll try one house like my friend Christie
or maybe not... we'll see