A NEW FAMILY TRADITION?

Years ago, I started a short lived family tradition of trying to finish a really big puzzle between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We did several large Christmas themed puzzles and even had one of them framed but when table space became limited and we couldn't have a 1000 piece puzzle laying around with a frisky dog, that tradition kind of went away. I think we've found a new one though. Our church has a candy house decorating "contest" where any group of people can get together and have fun creating a big candy house. Here is our entry for this year. If you're interested in the details - we used Juicyfruit stick gum for the siding, the brick is Stride berry gum, the windows are cookies and cream Hershey bars with Special Dark shutters, I piped the wreaths and bows on the windows, the green trees are upside down sugar cones rolled in green icing, and my favorite part is the Nerds ropes on the corners of the house and on the sides of the roof. The house is now sitting on a display table at church with 7 or 8 other houses that other people have done. People were really creative this year. One person did a beach theme with brown sugar sand and the winner did a church with a steeple and "stained glass" candy windows.