Who Has Time for Gingerbread, Anyway?!

Craft Time: Graham cracker houses. Instead of baking gingerbread, buy a box of graham crackers and just do the fun part - decorating! Again, sorry I have no photos to show you, but this is another one I am saving for next week. But if you really want to see some examples, just go to Google images and do a search for graham cracker house. You will get to see an abundance of graham creations to give you ideas.

The basics: You will need a box of graham crackers, a container of icing, and an assortment of candies for decorating. Also, a 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar mixed in a cup of icing will help the icing dry hard enough to hold your cracker house together. For a base used cardboard covered in aluminum foil. To pipe your icing onto your house, cut the corner off a plastic bag.

Once you have your walls assembled you have two options. 1. You can cover the house with icing and stick the candies on, or 2. use your icing like glue and stick individual candies on the house. If you go for option one, be sure to only ice one cracker at a time or the icing may get too hard for the candy to stick to it before you get all your decorating done.

Indoor Time: Sock Grab. Otherwise known as sock wrestling. The object of this game is to pull the socks off your opponent before they get your socks off. Obviously if you are playing this with your kids, you have the advantage. So, have fun with it and let your kids get the best of you - or at least get your socks! ;)

Optional alternative - if you have the board game Candyland, this would be the day to play it!

Story Time: Tell them the story of Hansel and Gretel today to go with your graham cracker houses. Don't have the story and no time to go to the library? Look it up online. :)

Outdoor Time: Inspired by Hansel and Gretel, hide a treat outside and create a trail that your kids have to follow in order to find it. You can literally use bread crumbs or whatever else you have that will do the trick and you don't mind trailing all over your yard. Bread crumbs are nice because the birds will clean up after your game for you! Be sure to be very elaborate in your trail making. Do lots of swirling and circling - make it lots of fun for your kids to track.

Music Time: Do you have some jingle bells in the house for holiday decoration? Let your kids play the jingle bells along to some holiday music today.

Art Time: Use playdough to create gingerbread men shapes.