Pretzel Log Cabin Houses

A friend of mine told me about a Pinterest project she saw of making pretzel log cabin houses instead of gingerbread houses.  They looked so cute, I thought we'd take a swing at it this year!  I'm hoping to make this a new tradition for Luke's birthday since it will be a week before Christmas every year.  I know it will be hard to have friends over for parties this time of year, but we can always have fun as a family creating fun houses together.  We split up the house building into 3 phases:  1- putting the side pieces together and letting them dry 2- constructing those dried pieces together and 3- decorating the house.  Jon and I had to do most of steps 1 and 2 for the kids.

I used this icing to make Royal icing:
3 egg whites
1 t vanilla
4 C powdered sugar

Step 1:  Build the side pieces.  We used a bread knife to cut the rods in half.  We were going to make square houses, until we realized just how many pretzels that would take, and we didn't have enough to make 3 houses that way.

 The girls did help squeeze the icing onto the pretzels, but since I was helping them, I couldn't take pictures ;)

Step 2:

After we let those dry a few hours, we went on to step 2:  Constructing the houses.  This was by far the hardest part, and we had a few of the pieces fall apart, which we had to repair.  We propped up the sides with a few card file boxes.

After we let those dry a bit, we added a rod through the triangle hole in the top to put the graham cracker roof on.  (One rod was not quite long enough, so we did have to tape another shorter piece to make it span the distance.  The only non-edible portion of their houses.

Step 3;  The FUN!  Decorating the House 

 Life savers made great wreaths.

 Square pretzels make great windows.

 Non-Pareils made great roof decorationg, and arsenal for the snowmen!

 Jack was happily partaking in the fun by eating the decorations.

 I love how Brilee always sticks her tongue out when she's concentrating.

 Daddy kept Luke busy in the play room and away from the table so he wouldn't pull everything off the table...but as soon as he saw me, I couldn't get a good pic, and I didn't want to forget the memory, so I'm still using this blurry picture.

 He started crying when I went back to helping the other kids, so Jon brought him in to join in.  But, he was getting sleepy by this point (8:00) so we finished up to give him a bath.

 Jack still happily eating at this point....

 Sean's house with 2 snowmen having a snowball fight!  Love his creativity!

 Brilee's house

 Lilly's House- you can tell she's the perfectionist that likes patterns, order, and symmetry.

 And Jack....still happily eating...

We had such an awesome time creating these houses!  Hoping to make this a new family tradition for Luke's birthday.  We now have them on display on the counter of the school kitchen so they can admire their work, but Luke won't pull them off and destroy them.  We are having to keep a close eye on Jack that he doesn't steal decorations, though!  ;)