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I’m a gingerbread-house failure, and that’s OK

Every year, I see the most amazing handmade gingerbread houses on Pinterest.

t These are not humble gingerbread houses. These are gingerbread mansions. They are elaborate and beautiful and most certainly more fancy than my own house.

t I can make cutout cookies. I can make peppermint bark. I can even make candy canes.

t But build a decent gingerbread house with my kids? I fail. Oh, how I’ve failed.

t Year after year, we make tasty gingerbread men and women. But they remain homeless.

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t One year, we tried the graham-cracker method. It seemed easy! You buy graham crackers. You use frosting for glue to build a house. Easy, right? Wrong.

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t It looked like a pile of graham crackers that roughly resembled a box. A shack, maybe? I couldn’t get the roof to stay up, and the frosting oozed out of the seams — but not in a friendly way. Then it fell apart, totally condemned.

t Plus, it isn’t even a gingerbread house. It is a graham-cracker house. Not the same thing.

t So last year, I got smarter. I would make the walls myself. I needed that pointy piece so the roof would have something to rest on.

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t I made my dough and cut out a template that I printed online. But once that wonderful smell of gingerbread baking wafted through our house, my kids started lurking in the kitchen like sharks.

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t While the pieces were cooling, my 3-year-old snatched one of the walls. I caught him, but not before he took a giant bite and broke the piece in half. Then I remembered that I’d forgotten to buy candy canes and gumdrops and all the other random candy you need to decorate the darn house. So I just shrugged, and we ate the walls.

t Sorry, Gingerbread family. The only house I can give you is in my belly.

t I’m just going to stick with cookies this year.

t>>See more Crappy Pictures

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