Ginger Bread House 2015

Before we get too far into 2016 I want to share with you the construction of our gingerbread houses from this past Christmas. We spent a good chunk of three days building three houses.

 

The family hard at it

 

Early in December, little Avery expressed to me, privately and politely, her disappointment at being little involved in the creating of last years gingerbread house. That's when I knew her mother and I had to stop hogging the show as we are prone to doing on these creative binges. Avery displayed great focus and did an exceptional job of decorating her own house and doesn't she look happy doing so? 

Seven years old and her sense of placement is already finely tuned

 

Avery's house

 

Although the image below (found on the Internet) is was what I would have done if I'd been making a gingerbread house of my own. This house is reminiscent of ones I found at The Gingerbread Museum in Prague ...

 

More Gingerbread Museum images can be seen here although you'll see mostly cookies, not houses

 

Denise designs and makes the house patterns and I get to put the icicles on everyone's finished masterpiece

All done, and on the buffet in the glory line up for the annual photo session 

 

Avery's house

 

Denise's Gaudi House.  Check out the amazing architectural genius of Gaudi here

 

Although Denise and I thought he should have had demerit points for using non traditional props and embellishments, Larry's house won hands down for having the most effective overall finish!

Larry's Tree House

Gingerbread Art



We went all out creating an entire village this year! Between seven of us we built five and a half gingerbread houses!



The half being the outhouse along side of the saloon!

Our designer, Denise, came up with the concepts and drew paper patterns for all the houses. I used a recycled pattern (from 2010) made it even smaller and constructed it in reverse. There was a hiccup with the baking. I had the oven temperature too low. No amount of re-baking would cook the dough properly. Good thing we had ample because we had to toss the pieces for two houses and start over again. 

Christmas Eve we begin

A little one has to do something while waiting for her gingerbread house!

Boxing Day and at last construction/decorating begins

Originally we had planned to have all the components baked and assembled on Christmas Eve day. However, with the baking issues, it was the afternoon of the 25th before we finally had all the pieces cut and cooked - which dangerously cut into turkey oven time! 

John and Alison at work on their haunted house while Larry, holding his outhouse walls upright, looks on

Both John and Alison are professional chefs.  Their arrival on Boxing Day, when we had only two of the houses upright, meant they had the pleasure of erecting the haunted house they had requested before spinning their creative magic decorating it!

The intense industry of seven bodies had a significant effect on the physical temperature in our little breakfast room!

Everyone was so focused on their project it's a wonder we have any construction photos at all. With so many helping hands the decorating was complete in just a few of hours and then we all sat back to admire our handy work!

Alison photographing the masterpieces. She and John saw that the houses were well tweeted!

After moving the finished houses to the display area Denise was found adding more icicles!



Avery wanted hers to be a traditional house

John and Alison's haunted house. Notice the noose, tomb stones and zombie gingerbread man rising from the grave!

Denise's saloon and Larry's larger-than-life outhouse with embarrassed snowman!



Decidedly the most creative effort, Bill used (among other embellishments) molten licorice on his burnt down house!

My wonky house

The best part of these intense construction sessions is the unity of working collaboratively. I have to say that by the time we finally got to the decorating stage it was tremendous fun.  Will we be able to go back to making one, single house next year?