Post by Aimée Lowry & Bettijo B. Hirschi from PagingSupermom.com

I have fond memories of decorating gingerbread houses with my cousins on Thanksgiving weekend. It’s a fun tradition, except for the whole baking a bunch of gingerbread thing, but that’s not something a kid has to worry about (just one good example of why the holidays are more fun for kids vs. adults). Though now that I’m the mom tasked with all that baking, those gingerbread houses were an endangered tradition. Then there was the light bulb moment… let’s turn our old cereal boxes into houses, like so:

So we dug through our recycle bin and pulled out various boxes and cartons to be the “gingerbread” in our Christmas village.

We used both wrapping paper and scrapbook paper to cover he boxes. Ultimately we decided the wrapping paper was easiest, not to mention readily available this time of year!

My favorite part of this project is that we didn’t need to buy a single thing for it — Aimee and I grabbed everything red, green and white that was in our craft cupboards; added some candy canes, wrapping paper, tape, glue and scissors; then set to work with our little elves.

Clearly the kids were having a ball, but even our Superdads were getting in on the fun of playing architect.

I love Liam’s modern house featuring the printable windows we whipped up. Of course we’re sharing the freebie printable windows in 4 colors!

I love the mini candy cane bunting — we’ve got a freebie printable of that for you too!

Reposted with permission by Aimée Lowry & Bettijo B. Hirschi from PagingSupermom.com