family sandwich: Candyland and a Treehouse

You'd better believe that we've all been looking forward to it. Our favorite competition of the winter season. Gingerbread houses!!! This year Hunter was teamed up with mom and Avery was partnered up with dad. Right off the bat I had an idea to do a treehouse and with Hunter as my partner it seemed like a great choice. We made our secret team plans and headed to the grocery store to each pick out a few specific needed decorating items. Deke looked at us like we were crazy as we headed to the produce section and grabbed up a sweet potato and some parsley. I had these great visions of the sweet potato acting as the tree trunk and holding up our structure. It looked great but the support just wasn't there so we had to add some celery supports to it. The parsley was chosen for our greenery and was harder to work with than we realized. Trying to get parsley to stick onto things with only frosting was not so easy. Even though it didn't turn out as cool as I planned it was still fun and original and I liked the way it turned out. We added a railing and some writing on the fort walls. Of course every good treehouse has to have a tire swing. Hunter made a fire pit and we added some bushes on the ground. We tried to make a licorice rope ladder but it wasn't sticking together so we bagged it.

It was really fun to think outside the box and use some different food items besides the typical candies. Hunter and I had so much fun being on a team together. It was great because Deke actually kept telling us what a good idea it was. If I had had him on my team on this one the structure could have been so much better. With him as the engineer and me with the creative touches we would be awesome on a team together which we have never done. We decided next year to work together on a team and see what we could do. I love our treehouse dude, I think it rocks!!

Deke and Avery were at first going to do a castle but then decided to make their version of Candyland instead. So away they went decking it out with every possible candy available.

They had a licorice topped castle, Reddenbocker mountain, a candy corn forest, a rolo peak with caramel waterfall and the game spaces were sugar wafers. Also horses pulling a carriage. Super bright and colorful, truly a delicious land of confection.

We made Em a simple house, gave her a dallop of frosting and a pile of candy and told her to decorate away. She loved it and did a great job of only eating a few while working.