Gingerbread House

THE BITS
in keeping with the holiday spirit, [The Now Former Male] and I made a gingerbread house. YAY!

Except not from scratch.

Once upon a time my mom and I tried to follow Martha Stewart's recipe for a gingerbread house. We made the dough, chilled it, made the templates/stencils, cut out and baked the entire house, and then 8 hours of that BS later we were too tired to even attempt assembly. We gave up and put the cookie sheets of house pieces up high out of reach of cats... and then forgot about them for two months. Once I tried to make one myself and assemble the sides with caramelized sugar, but I burned the fuck out of my hands and the damn thing fell spectacularly to pieces. My patience and the pieces ended up in the garbage can.

Long story short, I decided gingerbread houses are for people who have endless amounts of time on their hands. I am not one of those people.

THE NIBBLES
No ingredients... see above. I cheated and it was worth it because it still took 6 damn hours. And since there are no ingredients, I am only posting photos with comments. Enjoy!

Gingerbread house pieces and bowls of candy beckoning us to assemble the house. (yes, my dinning room table is really my desk)

the house put together with royal icing and mugs holding the roof panels up. Inventive, I know.

Smashing rock hard gumdrops and spearmint leaves while we waited an hour for the house to dry

spearmint leaves being turned into pine trees via scissors and creative squishing by yours truly

we discovered that a lot of water would thin out the icing and make it super smooth on the roof

this is my favorite part of the entire house. While he put a Twizzler trim on the edges, I put the tiny jawbreakers on the roof

the one with the hat is mine. The one with a green shirt, red suspenders, and yellow pants is [The Now Former Male]'s.

this took far too much effort and by the time I put the window panes on, it dawned on us that we should have decorated it flat and THEN assembled the house. Lesson learned.

6 hours later, we had a gingerbread house that looks like children decorated it

Lesson learned: ice and decorate the roof and side panels BEFORE assembling so as not to have drippy lines. Amazing the kind of common sense that is revealed through trial and error!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!