This DIY Flat Gingerbread House for Kids is a great holiday hack that your family will love!
What is a DIY Flat Gingerbread House? It is an amazing gingerbread house hack that I recently discovered and just had to share! Have you ever made a regular gingerbread house only to have your kids get bored half-way through? Well, this DIY Flat Gingerbread House is a genius hack that will keep your kid’s attention until it is complete!
Every year around the holidays I’m tempted to do a gingerbread house with my son. When looking at the overpriced kits available at the store, I debate if this is the year we’ll actually commit to another project during the holiday season. I mean, the elf on the shelf already has us working overtime, do we really need another thing to do? I look at these picture-perfect houses on the box and imagine a wonderful, peaceful afternoon with my son where we get to be creative together. Once I (ginger)snap out of my daydream my logical brain kicks in to tell me it’s just not going to happen.
The truth is my son will show interest for maybe five seconds until he realizes that we’re not supposed to eat all the candy and then he’ll run off to play leaving me with the task of building and decorating the perfect gingerbread house by myself with no one to stop ME from eating all the candy. Goodbye perfect mother-son quality time and goodbye waistline! I’m not going to lie…I probably would eat all the candy.
Even though I know this is pretty much how the situation would play out, I still (kinda) want to risk it every year. Then again I don’t feel like dealing with the mess or having to store it. Some people just wrap the house in plastic wrap or foil to keep it fresh and store it in the oven or microwave (if it fits). The whole idea seems like a lot of work and don’t we have enough to do over the holidays? So this whole back and forth takes place in my head in the three minutes I’m looking at these adorable boxed gingerbread kits at the store. Eventually leading me to the conclusion of “maybe next year” and walking away empty handed.
This year my son’s school invited us to decorate a gingerbread house with our child. You have got to be kidding me, I thought. How is this going to work? I figured they were probably in over their heads but to my surprise, they weren’t! I mean, they are child care professionals so I should’ve known better than to doubt their expertise. As usual, I was impressed. His teachers came up with this awesome gingerbread house hack. It’s amazing! Okay so maybe I don’t get out much but I think you can agree that this is pretty genius and way more cost effective than the store-bought kits.
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All you’ll need are the following items:
~ Paper plate (or regular plate would work fine too)
~ Graham crackers
~ White Decorating Gel (Single) to use as “glue” (also available in a 12 Pack)
~ Candy pieces
~ Imagination 😉
Making the DIY Flat Gingerbread House:
Start by breaking up the graham cracker pieces to shape into a house. You can see we used two full-size graham crackers and then cut a piece in the shape of a triangle for the roof. Next, “glue” your pieces to the plate with icing so they don’t move. The teachers had already done this step ahead of time so the icing was already dry and the house was “stuck” in place.
Next, select your candy pieces and “glue” them to the house and/or plate using the icing. I put the icing on the pieces and my son would place them on the house. When he got tired of that, I would do the placement but ask him for input. He also helped break up the pieces of the red licorice palm tree and sorted the remaining candy pieces so we could decide where to put them.
This is when my little helper elf kept eating our building materials! You just can’t find good help anymore!
He thought I wouldn’t notice.
When you’re done decorating the house, keep the plate flat until dry so the candy pieces stay put. Wrap with plastic wrap or foil to store the house. Another great thing about this is that it is flat so it’s much easier to store than the traditional gingerbread house. Some people leave their house out for decoration but I’d be worried about bugs and/or dust.
The Completed Masterpiece!
Voila! Our masterpiece! Complete with a snowman on the left with sour patch kid arms, candy cane heart front door, cat (animal cracker) at the front door, snow (marshmallows) on the roof with purple snow (sprinkles) on top, candy melt and fruit loop windows, M&M Christmas lights all over the house, a red licorice palm tree with gummy bear and M&M ornaments, a flying Peep bird in the sky (top left), and last but not least our little family on the bottom right with the gingerbread mom and dad and the teddy graham child.
This was a ton of fun and it also kept the attention of my three-year-old! It’s a Christmas miracle! We’ll definitely be doing this DIY Flat Gingerbread House for Kids again next year!
Very cute and easy!
Thank you, Kathy! The best part was that there was little assembly required so we could get right to the fun part of decorating the house. Very easy indeed!