Gingerbread House

Every year, as a family tradition, we put together a gingerbread house. We buy a kit from the grocery store (they are very easy to come by), open it up, and let our imaginations do the rest! It is so simple, but so fun and creative. You can make it look however you please! We have been doing this for years, and every time, the house turns out looking completely different. 
The standard kit comes with pre-baked gingerbread pieces in the shape of a house: front, back, two sides, two roof halves, and a chimney; as well as a little snowman, boy, and tree figure. The kit comes with a bag of royal icing, and bags of peppermints, gumdrops, gumballs, and other little candies in a rainbow of colors. We assign a family member to decorate a different part of the house each. Then we put the pieces together and put the house on display. The house is purely for decoration, we never it eat. We build it in late November and leave it on display until long after Christmas, sometimes until it's nearly Easter time! The kit is not high quality or great tasting; the gingerbread is full of preservatives, and the candies are pure sugar, and not to our liking. I have considered baking the gingerbread pieces myself, but decided it simply was not worth it, since we just end leaving the house out in the open before finally throwing it out. It would be such a waste of homemade, and it is cheaper to buy the kit anyway. However, on the same day we build the house, we also decorate homemade gingerbread cookies. These taste great, and we can decorate them to suit our personal tastes! Here is the house we built today.