Gingerbread House

Steve’s mother was kind enough to give all her grandkids gingerbread houses to build and decorate. Aware of our interest in the project in years past, she got one for Steve and me as well. We were going to decorate it at their house, but ended up getting busy with other projects and brought the gingerbread house back to Santa Cruz.

We decided to go with a California Christmas theme, so we did not do snow or icicles or anything of that sort. The only nod to a white Christmas was the snowman we placed on the roof after we ran out of chocolate chips for roofing tiles. We imagine that he’s one of those giant inflatable sort and just couldn’t fit in the front yard due to these poor homeowners’ tiny lot size.

Steve assembling chimney:

Roofing tiles in progress:

Completed front:

Completed back:

Completed left side:

Completed right side:

We attempted a few new things this year, including grinding up candy and mixing it with icing to make “paint” (before you ask, no, we don’t have any food coloring… that would have been much easier, but we didn’t want to go out and buy it just for this). The blue “paint” on the doors looked nice, I thought, but the yellow on the windows to give the appearance that lights were on inside the gingerbread house was a little too runny and didn’t quite work. But I think it turned out nice all the same. Not a bad way to kill an afternoon.