Marin has some wonderful holiday events every year, and one of my favorites is the Gingerbread House Workshop at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito.

Little ones delight first in piecing together their own gingerbread house (from a kit), and then decorating it with icing, candy canes, gumdrops and chocolate bits. When I peeked in this week, the room was full of cheerful chatter and delicious smells, and it seemed to me that the program had managed to hit just the right balance of enough order to accomplish the task and a festive, glorious mess.