A gingerbread campground?

Yesterday the girls and I attempted to make gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. We did it last year and they were eagerly anticipating another shot at it.

It all started well. We had everything set up and ready to go: walls, roof, "glue", and a wide assortment of decorations like marshmallows, gumdrops, raisins, popcorn and M&M's.

But whereas last year we used white frosting as glue, this time I decided to try something more festive - green and red frosting. This was a huge mistake because the consistency was more like decorating gel than frosting and had no adhesive quality to it!

The walls are up and things are looking good.

Right after this picture is when things went horribly wrong.

As I gently placed the roof on the first structure, a wall collapsed. Then the entire roof collapsed.

Before we knew it, we had a bunch of frosting-covered graham crackers, all lying in a rubble heap.

But after assessing the situation, we quickly turned lemons into lemonade. I declared one of our "buildings" a tent and Amanda named the other one a cottage.

The girls then proceeded to gleefully decorate them as if this is what we had intended to make all along.

The end result

A few hours later, the demolition crew came in... and happily devoured the entire North Pole campground.