Sunday, December 12, 2010

Our very first gingerbread house













































Here is a mish-mash of photos of the gingerbread house we made this year. It was our first time doing it, and other than a couple of mishaps while baking the pieces it was a lot of fun. I don't really consider myself to be very creative, so I was impressed with my demonstration of creativity in the creation of the campfire I made out of pretzel sticks and red and orange jujubes.

I was also impressed with my snowman made out of mini marshmallows. I had watched a tutorial online of how to make snowmen out of the big marshmallows but figured that would be WAY too disproportionate for the house. So I stuck together some marshmallows with icing, then remembered I have gel icing dyes in the cupboard so I used the brown dye, with a toothpick to draw on his eyes, mouth and buttons. I then skewered his middle section with another toothpick to make him some arms. I then thought of the idea to use the orange dye to dye the tip of another toothpick orange to use as a nose for him. When he was done I thought he was awfully cute, but still needed a hat. I looked through our inventory of jujubes, pretzels and other candy to see if I could make him a suitable top hat. There really wasn't anything suitable, so I grabbed a green gumdrop and started squeezing and twisting it until the top popped off and I said, "hey, a green beret for the snowman!" So I glued it on his head, and then had the great idea to use one of the candy balls to make a green pompom for his beret. I love that little guy :)

Jay let his creativity shine through with the idea to build a bench out of pretzel sticks. It was a little bit trying at times for him, and his paralyzed fingers, but with the goopy royal icing glue it came together eventually. I think the teddy grahams were a fun idea for inhabitants of our gingerbread house, and I love the two little ones sitting on the pretzel bench.

I posted up some pictures on Facebook and my cousin suggested that there should have been a patio swing in the patio. We are already starting to think of what we could do next year!

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