Hello Gabi - I have wanted to reply, but hadn't had a moment to get the picture uploaded! My son and I attend a Community Ed "class" which sponsors gingergbread house making! This is his third year. His houses have lasted many months...of course we don't eat them, but he loves to look at them. They have the houses already put together for us, individual bowls of icing, and then a buffet line of candies and each child goes through the line and chooses what they want to use to decorate their house and "property"! They can go back for seconds too! Each child also has a tube of NECCO wafers. I think the key is to have everything all lined out ahead of time. We did buy a kit of cookie cutters for each piece of a house that also work well and have done our own, but going to the class is a lot easier and not as expensive (i.e. left over candy that we all don't need to eat!). My son's house this year...not quite as fancy as yours, but fun still the same! [Merry Christmas! Wendy

Your house is adorable. One year for Christmas, I made the sides and roofs, one house for each small child, and paired them with a big cousin to decorate. It was one of the best activities over the years. The little ones loved the attention from the big guys. Another tradition we started for the cousins was that you had to hug and thank whoever gave you a gift. We had some crazy hugs, especially among the guys. But again, the little ones loved being picked up and swung around.

Depending on the weight, I used to put small gingerbread houses together with fairly stuff buttercream, the kind that crusted, and it held pretty well, but I never tried to move the houses. Usually, though, I just use the traditional 4 cups powdered sugar/3 egg white/1/2 tsp. cream of tartar icing, thick enough to be piped down the sides of the walls and holds well, but it's not particularly flavorful. Maybe not even edible, LOL. By the time our houses got decorated with every candy known to mankind, they were pretty heavy. We tended to refer to them as gingerbread "hovels", and gleefully dismantled and ate them when the urge struck. At least the buttercream was good to eat. Annie

I just saw this story On BuzzFeed and loved it, so wanted to post a link for anyone else who’s interested. https://apple.news/AhrVrtFAQTTqhKjza_Gu7hA