Gingerbread houses: if you can't beat them, eat them.

I love the Conner Prairie Gingerbread Village. Since moving to Indiana, this has become one of our favorite holiday traditions. The edible masterpieces that can be seen there are crazy amazing. Last year someone made Lucas Oil Stadium, complete with retractable roof and thousands of tiny seats. Bilbo's Hobbit hole was there, a giant Rubic's Cube, a beautiful carousel, and a model of the arena from Catching Fire, the second book of The Hunger Games.

The year before, someone made The Burrow. For the non-Harry Potter people, that's the Weasley's amazing house, built many stories high, wobbly story after mismatched story of awesomeness. This was the creation that sparked my son asking could we please make a gingerbread Hogwarts.

It's precious how much faith he has in me.

November 2013 -- My favorite!

We're a family of avid readers, so when we brainstorm house ideas, they tend to spring from our favorite books. Obviously, Hogwarts is out. You'll see why as I continue this story. Last year we made a modest little dog house. Snoopy's dog house from the Charlie Brown Christmas special. There were no surprises or set backs last year.

 I barely survived this year's build.

We threw around ideas at the dinner table, wondering if we could make an RV. That morphed into a traveling library, which I thought was precious, but complicated because wheels. I don't know if you've noticed, but wheels are round. Round is hard.

We compromised by agreeing to make a Little Free Library and fill it with a few of our favorite books. And so our Little Free Gingerbread Library was born.

Conceived. Birthing this baby was
 an arduous, at times heart wrenching, story.

We began by baking lots of gingerbread. LOTS! Two batches of gingerbread and two batches of Rice Krispie Treats and three batches of royal icing later, we'd constructed our gingerbread library.

We took a trip to Fuzzywigs in Hamilton Town Center for candies to decorate and then the kids each took a side to make their own.

True to the Christmas spirit!

He loves his Legos. Everything is awesome!

We experimented with fondant icing, something we'd never used before, for our book jackets. Everything was going well.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch 22, & The Hobbit

And then…

It started snowing.

Being a transplanted southern girl, I blame all the world's ills on snow.

It's starting to sag, but we're still hopeful.

We watched with anticipation, wondering if our roof would hold. But alas, it was not meant to be.

I blame the snow.

Calamity!

What I think is spectacular about my kids is their perseverance. Once the roof collapsed, they jumped right into fix-it mode, helping to brainstorm possibilities to solve our little problem. With the help of friends and family from far away (thank you, social media), we decided on a fix and set to work.

New joists to hold the "plywood."

Little patchwork

Relieved, and very pleased that we'd managed to take what could have been a sad situation and turned it into a funny one, we sat back to admire our work.

Perhaps we need new roofers?

And then…

Right. You win, Gingerbread. I give up.

Sometimes the good Universe just wants you to eat Rice Krispie Treats. Eat the evidence and no one will ever know!

This is what nature intended us to do with Rice Krispie Treats!