Gingerbread land – Hive and Nest

I can’t quite seem to get the Christmas decorations out, but I don’t want to deprive my children of their holiday fun, so we broke out the gingerbread house kits over the weekend. I have too many children to decorate a single house without a war ensuing, so we usually get two gingerbread houses and split the kids up to decorate them (It’s come to my attention that there are families who let each family member decorate their own house.  Uh.  Yeah. I really have no place to put six gingerbread houses.) 

This year Ada and Jasper were both old enough to be involved in the gingerbread mayhem so we decided to have one house for the boys and one house for the girls.  I’m a big fan of the Costco kits. Each one features lots of candy, fast-drying icing as well as a bonus tree and two gingerbread men.

In case you were thinking that there are very few differences between the sexes, may I present our two finished gingerbread houses:

Shall we take a closer look at each cottage? 

First the girls’: notice the attempt at clothing, the ornaments on the trees, the spearmint jelly shrubs and orderly trim on the house:

Now for the boys’ house, the theme of which appears to be “ICING!” (although several walls were ignored altogether.)  The tree seems to have suffered an accidental decapitation (but it’s nothing a glob of royal icing can’t fix), and there are some mysterious holes here and there.  

One gingerbread man was eaten. But the remaining one?

Would death by frosting be considered drowning or asphyxiation?