december daily: day 18 edible christmas tree village

with doug being gone and being low on energy, i didn't go our traditional "let's make a gingerbread house" route.

instead, we made a Christmas tree village........and had just as much fun (and mess, LOL!).

we started by gathering all the leftover halloween candy that i had hidden just for this occassion. (slick, eh?!)

then me and spidergirl unwrapped it all, condensing it to this little bowl.

then we gathered the sprinkles and some leftover peanut butter chips from the pantry.

we bought a pack of sugar cones (about 1/10th of the cost of a gingerbread house kit!) and threw down some powdered sugar 'snow' on our serving tray.

whipped up some green royal icing and put them to work.


ashlyn, my perfectionist, took her time decorating her trees with nothing more than grape nerds, red gumdrops (that she wanted me to sculpt into stars, LOL) and some powdered sugar.

while spidergirl dumped on anything and everything.....including gummy teeth as a tree topper, LOL!
we discovered:

1. a Christmas tree village doesn't require nearly as much candy as a gingerbread house.

2. but, they are just as beautiful of a mess.

and....

3. ashlyn still freaks out over messy, sticky hands and had to walk away to wash her hands just as often.
she gave up after 3 or 4 cones saying she was done. next time i think i'll add the icing to the cones for her before calling her to the table. but her sensory issues didn't ruin the fun. she just knew when she was done.

and we ended up with the cutest little Christmas tree village my eyes ever did see.

that kept them busy for a whole 45 minutes.

we spent the rest of the day lazily playing on the computer, watching Santa Paws, doing homework, coloring in our jumbo sized coloring books.

the end.