Making a Gingerbread House with a kit from Village Workshop

A few years ago, I began a Christmas tradition of making a gingerbread house. You can see our latest efforts here - making gingerbread houses. It's very hard work though, especially baking all the gingerbread and cutting out the pieces to the correct sizes, so when I heard about Village Workshop via my Blog On Win goody bag I was very keen to try out one of their gingerbread house making kits.

We were sent a small Santa's Stuck house kit. The kit contains everything that you need to make the gingerbread house - shaped pieces of gingerbread, icing, decorations a tray to stand it on and full instructions. The gingerbread pieces are very securely packaged inside.

First we emptied out the contents and I mixed up the icing to build the house. I know from experience that you need to make the icing quite thick so that it all holds together properly. You can use the plastic bag that the icing powder has been packaged in as an icing bag by cutting off one of the corners. The pieces are cleverly shaped with slots that fit together really easily and I had no problems assembling the house on the enclosed board.

Normally I make my houses the day before and then let the children decorate, but the house felt pretty sturdy almost immediately, so I let the children at it straight away. It's not a huge house, but there was plenty of room for each child to take a couple of sides, and there were lots of different types of decoration for them to use.

They had great fun decorating the house and took it very seriously. This kit comes with a pair of Santa legs that you can stick on the roof as if he's stuck in the chimney, which they loved.

If you want to make a gingerbread house, either for yourself or especially with children, I'd definitely recommend this kit. It was really easy to put together, remained sturdy, and was a lot of fun. If you were having a family gathering around Christmas it would be a great way to entertain a small group of children, either with a smaller house each or a larger one to share. 

I received a gingerbread house making kit in exchange for this review.