Christmas 2025: Making Gingerbread Houses

Second Post of the Day

Lisa loves to decorate cookies and cakes. So, of course she likes to decorate gingerbread houses, too. She arrived one day with a house for each of us and a tub (a tub!!) full of icings, sugars, dragees, and assorted candy and we spent that afternoon together working on them.

Well, Craig politely declined and said he'd just watch.

The reality was that we had to watch HIM! LOL

Lisa's Gingerbread House

I honestly did not know she had such talent. I'd gotten a glimpse of it when we decorated the Christmas cookies on Christmas Eve, but in the past we have had so many kids here to decorate them that the adults never really got the chance to sit down and do any without rushing. 

I think she already had a plan for how she wanted to decorate her house because she got straight to work.

Soon a beautiful creation was visible.

Everything was put on one by one using tweezers that were made for cookie and cake decorating.

Three and a half hours later, her gingerbread house was finished. 

(Can I just say that those green disks at the base of her house are very tasty? Ask me how I know! Hah!)

So much work but the results were worth it. 

She left her gingerbread house here with us and it is displayed on the kitchen island.

Kyle's Gingerbread House

Kyle surprised me, too, but again, I think it's because we had no littles around and could work without needing to stop and take care of something. (The doggos? Yes. They still needed to go out once or twice. Easy peasy.)

Like Lis, he got straight to work, using tweezers and an assortment of decorations.

Quite a gingerbread house began to take shape!

I have never seen anyone use kitchen shears to cut candy canes (at least, not without making a mess)

but he was able to trim them neatly and use them for his house. 

He used the shears, too, to create the arms on his snowman.

Another marshmallow, dusted in a brown sugar, made the chimney.

And I loved his lamp post constructed with a gumdrop and toothpick!

Another talented decorator in the family surfaces!

My Gingerbread House

Then there's me.

When I opened the box containing the house I was to decorate, half the roof had broken off. Lisa had two extra houses and offered one to me, but I didn't see a broken roof, I saw a Breyer barn!

One that's open to allow models to be put inside and played with.

That was my vision. The execution? Not quite what I'd envisioned.

I thought I ought to work from the inside to the outside, so I filled the interior with tiny yellow dragees and then yellow sprinkles on top of that layer to simulate straw. (Betsy in WI, you guessed right!)

I plopped in two Mini Whinnies - the scale between the straw and the models was off, but I was going for effect, not perfection.

Sadly, things derailed after that. 

The icing I'd used to outline the barn doors and windows began to slide and drip.

I tried to wipe it off and begin again, but the coloring had stained the gingerbread. Oh, well. Nothing I could do about that and I was still enjoying myself so all was good.

We ended up with a cute little village of two houses and a barn. And, we had a lot of fun together as we created, chatted, and laughed while we worked.

I'm game to try it again next year. And it may just be a barn again. I've got a plan...

Stay 'tooned, and Happy New Year!