Mermaid Palace from No-Bake Gingerbread Houses for Kids

Since Maren is STILL out of school (25 days until she goes back and counting**), I figured this was a perfect time to try our hand at one of the houses in No-Bake Gingerbread Houses for Kids. I let Maren choose which house we'd make first, and she chose the Mermaid Palace--no surprise there from my girly girl!

Once the Master of Disaster was in bed for his afternoon nap, we set to work. I used meringue powder to make my royal icing, per Lisa's tip in our interview. I had a can leftover from a Wilton Cake Decorating class I took a while back, but it can be readily purchased in the Wilton aisle at both Michael's and JoAnn's (don't forget your 40% off coupon!) The Mermaid Palace uses stacks of vanilla Oreos and ice cream cones to construct the towers, so we glued them all together and let them dry for a bit--not long, because royal icing dries out very quickly.

Once they were dry and secure, we got to do the fun part--the decorating! We mostly followed the picture in Lisa's book, though Maren chose blue icing for the walls instead of seafoam green. I piped on the frosting and Maren helped me smooth it out with a frosting knife.

For decoration, we used Smarties (leftover from Halloween!) and some tiny pink sugar pearls that I had in my cupcake decorating supplies; every Mermaid's Palace needs a little bling, right? Lisa's Mermaid Palace in the book looks like rests on a sandy seafloor made of graham cracker crumbs. I don't have any graham crackers right now, so we improvised and used breadcrumbs, which look just the same! I simply squirted royal icing all over the cardboard base, smoothed it out with a knife and we dumped the crumbs on.

My local Walgreen's was sold out of the green sour straws so we had to forgo the seaweed, but we did add sour gummy worm sea anemone to wave in the underwater currents. Maren loved how it turned out and had such fun making it! The whole thing was incredibly easy; the hardest thing for her was being patient while the icing dried. Being able to use store bought, pre-made items for the structure of the tower was such a huge mess- and time-saver for me!

I think next up we'll try the Cozy Cabin from Lisa's book. Maren and I have been reading the Little House on the Prairie series and when she saw it she said, "Look, it's Mary and Laura's cabin!" so that would be a fun way to tie into our reading. The fact that the cabin is constructed from Pirouette cookies, which just happen to be one of my all-time favorites, has nothing whatsoever to do with it. ;) And Pirouettes are on sale right now anyway, so it's economical!

You have a few more hours to leave a comment here and enter to win your own signed copy of No-Bake Gingerbread Houses for Kids! The giveaway closes at noon MST!

**(disclaimer: I love my daughter and I enjoy spending time with her. However, I also enjoy the precious 2.75 hours of "alone" time I get per day when she's at kindergarten and the baby is napping. It keeps me sane and allows me to get a lot done. Maren truly loves school, and is bored without it. Six weeks out of school in the middle of winter when it is too cold to go outside and run around gives us all cabin fever.)