The Ginger Bread House Endeavor

This is my friend Nan French's gingerbread house, we go to see her masterpiece every year. She has been doing gingerbread houses for over 20 years, and the one you see pictured here is one of her "small" projects. It only took her 2 days to make from start to finish, and she designs a new floor plan every year. She has hundred of dollars worth of furnishings inside and out that she has collected over the years that really make it amazing to look at. Usually she does a "santa's workshop" this was just a house Santa is stopping in on Christmas eve. I absolutely love her work, and I've been toying with the idea of apprenticing her. The problem is time. December is the busiest month of my life, there is a reason I get my christmas shopping done before December! I have more clients in December than any other month, more activities, parties, celebrations, rehearsals, service opportunities, and gifts to make and distribute, birthdays including Jared's, school Christmas sings and parties, concerts, I could go on and on. So I didn't have time to exactly "apprentice" myself, but I did ask Nan for a guidelines and tips worksheet so I could try my hand at it, and she obliged me.  I decided Tuesday of this past week to take a deep breath and plunge in, make a small house that was big enough to light and furnish, and see what happened.

The first step was to buy the materials and make the "blueprints" of the panels for the house. I'm no architect so it took some trial by error to get this to work out right. Took a couple hours to sketch and cut the plans, make a master list of what I'll need to make so I could check it all off, get the lights prepared, and the tile foundation ready. I was actually excited to be creating something and my artistic side was firing up.

The next step was to make the dough. I have never in my life before made gingerbread, so this was an interesting learning curve. I made several pieces too fat and didn't prepare them on tin foil properly so they stuck, and I failed to cut them back to the exact shape immediately after baking them so when it came time to assemble there were quite a few flaws. This was also back breaking work rolling all this out. It took two days to come up with all the pieces, and I actually had way more than I needed, the house evolved into something other than I was originally planning.

Step three was making the frosting and assembly, again, never made royal icing before. That stuff is interesting, once it dries it is tougher than super glue, I made quite a mess trying to figure out how to work with it. I had to band saw many of the pieces down, and completely re-bake some pieces, and had gingerbread crumbs everywhere!!!  Some of the candy "stain glass windows" didn't turn out, so I was getting a little discouraged by day three I will admit. It didn't look all that great at this point, and I had to go back to the store to get a few more things.

I started getting excited once I was putting the little furniture inside. I used miniatures that I already had floating around the house this year, I might invest in more in later years. I did buy a little christmas tree and some fence trim on sale last month that worked nicely in it. I frosted the front yard and decorated the front and it gave me enough excitement to continue with my endeavor. In fact I felt like I had little angels around me encouraging me to keep pressing forward.

The final step was the roof. This is actually made from white styrofoam board, but you have to cut it and tape the lights to it just right so it will mount properly. I got it a little short in front but tried to cover that up with icicles. You can cover a multitude of sins with royal icing snow!  I added a few more decorations on the sides after mounting the roof and at 10:20 pm the fourth day called it officially complete!  I think it turned out pretty good for my first go at it. Lots of flaws but pretty darn cute anyway. The kids adore it!  And Jared loves it too. Might just have found myself a Christmas tradition!

The kids decided their gift to each other this Christmas was gingerbread houses. These were from the store and they bought them with their own money. They had fun FHE night decorating their own houses. Little cuties.