For the Love of gingerbread men ...

Here is an idea for a fun get-together... A Gingerbread Village party.

Last week our little clique of doctors rolled up their sleeves and got down and dirty building houses. Gingerbread houses, that is (or as one of us hashtagged it, Habitat for Gingerbreadmen.)

Since our time is kind of limited (as in we tend to sleep an average of 4 -5 hours on hardcore rotations), we purchased kits similar to these from JoAnn's. The cool thing is that the kits come with all the ingredients and components that you need to make a gingerbread house already (just add water!), including the plastic utensils and the candy decorations so it was super-easy. The only surprise that came with these was that the houses had to be put together and chilled 2-3 hours before the decorating.

We ordered a few pizzas, made a salad (we're in the healthcare industry after all), popped open some bottles of wine and got down to business.

We started out with these:





Here are the hyperglycemic results:

We made it a contest...the pieces of paper are entry numbers!

Now if you have the time and the baking gene, you can go al natural and make your own Gingerbread from scratch, like here. Either way, whether in the G-rated (sans alcohol) or in the adult version gingerbread house building can get your creative juices flowing and is an awesome holiday inspired team building exercise. Clean up was super easy too: we just chucked the plastic tablecloth and were left with adorable (and edible) homemade holiday decorations.