Chance and I wanted to think of something we could bring to our Thanksgiving celebration with his family. I told him how when my Grandma was still here and we went to her place for Thanksgiving, she would have gingerbread houses for us to decorate at the end of the night. He liked the idea so we ran with it! Instead of buying kits, we wanted the challenge of making all the gingerbread ourselves, just like Grandma did. We found a recipe online (foodnetwork) and spent all morning making the gingerbread for 6 houses and cutting out the shapes (which was a trial and error... cutting the gingerbread shapes again right after they come out of the oven is the better way!), just hoping they would work out! At the end of the night we quickly made some frosting (we were rookies and put the frosting in the bag before we put the decorative tips in the bag... haha), put them in bags and had everyone start decorating. It turned into a contest with cash prizes! We think everyone really enjoyed decorating, competing, and even eating the gingerbread scraps, so we decided it was a success! As I watched everyone decorating their houses, I felt like I got a glimpse of the joy Grandma must have had when she saw everyone really enjoying the things that she had spent a lot of time and effort doing for us. I miss her everyday, but I'm so thankful for her influence in my life. Chance and I gave ourselves the crappiest of the houses, the one we tried to cut when it had cooled, and we were thinking it wasn't going to turn out well, but we love how it turned out! It's so cute! Gingerbread houses are such a charming decoration. And I'm so happy that it will even be good enough to eat when the holiday is over.

We also made and brought a 7 layer dip for everyone to snack on before Thanksgiving dinner, just in case people started to get hungry before dinner was ready. Good thing we did, it got devoured! I tried to channel my "inner Aunt Dianne" when making the dip, because she always makes the best kind and always makes it look really pretty. I think I did a pretty good job! As a side note, we made it the night before and the avocados we bought were super hard and not ripe... but we tried to use them anyways. It wasn't really mashing well, but MOM TO THE RESCUE, she blended it up with a little bit of milk and saved the guac. Thank goodness for moms.