Is there such a thing as "too much candy"?

I don't think so. (Yes, spoken as one who has diabetes, so take that into consideration.)

The other day several friends, including our daughter Katie, who goes by Kat with her friends, posted the following picture on Facebook.

Find the recipe (haha!) here.

I'd made gingerbread houses from kits before (with their insufficient number of candies - so frustrating!) and with graham crackers, too, but these? These were truly houses I could eat right down to the foundations!

Yesterday, I bought an obscene amount of candy, enough for three houses.

• 24 Kit Kat bars
• 3 Aero bars
• 3 boxes of Smarties (Canadian kind, not the American kind)
• 2 large bags of Skittles
• and more

Really, you don't need the full list. But, as you can see, I spent a pretty penny on this escapade. In the end, Katie couldn't join us for the celebration of sugar, but we decorated a house for her anyway.

Here is my own pile of Kit Kat bars.

Enough for one house. You can count seven, but there are eight in the pile.

As well as cutting out the cardboard forms for each of the houses, Steve decorated one. In very Engineer-orderly fashion, might I say. (He also took time to quibble with the orientation of the Kit Kat bars, arguing that a horizontal layout would give a better impression of a log cabin. He was right, of course, but I pointed to the rules and he went with the game plan.)

Steve's Kit Kat house, under construction

Likewise, Emily's showed some OCD influences.
Also, as she pointed out, some Halloween influences.

My own was a testament to improvisation and randomness.

I kind of got carried away decorating and forgot to take pictures, until Emily reminded me.

L-R; Emily's, mine, Steve's
The tree at front-centre is Emily's

Focus on Steve's house. His tree is in the foreground.

This may not have been the healthiest activity I've ever undertaken with my kids (kid, really, unless you count Steve, which he often does), but given the news of this past week and my lifelong need to actively fight depression, I count this as an afternoon well spent.

Nevertheless, I will be shipping the houses off to more suitable homes tomorrow.