What’s better than building a genuine gingerbread house while listening to the Transiberian Orchestra (holiday edition) station on Pandora, to get you in the mood for the Christmas season?! Nothing! It was so much fun, especially the part when I “accidentally” tossed about 200 sprinkles into the air, in a failed attempt to add some color. Needless to say, we made quite a mess but it really brought me back to my younger years. My six cousins, my brother, and I used spend a weekend at grandma and grandpa’s building gingerbread houses at this time of year, now THAT was a mess. This year, I was inspired to kick off the season by a sudden urge to buy Christmas decorations for our little home on my lunch break. Believe it or not, Rite-Aid had some awesome décor for half-off. With the lights, snowman, Santa Clause and wreath in place we set out to construct a gingerbread house.

Chris and Lauren

Confession of Christmaholics: We cheated and bought a neat little kit at Trader Joe’s – FYI, we usually refer to it as TJs, not to be confused with the town an hour south of us, Tijuana. Turns out, their gingerbread doesn’t taste that great but once it’s looking pretty, who wants to eat it anyways? After getting the best tricep workout of my life whipping the egg whites (not having a KitchenAid really forces you to break a sweat), we added the powder sugar the kit provided and a few drops of lemon juice to help with the stick factor. The kit came with little snow people and a tiny dog—adorable. The included candy décor was very limited so we added our usual zest and improvised with some chocolate chips we had on hand. Not the prettiest little house I’ve ever seen but it definitely got the Christmas spirit running through my veins! Next time, we’ll bake our own gingerbread…

Our little Christmas home

From the Little Yellow Kitchen,

Lauren