Hansel and Gretel

This weekend, I was so filled with the holiday spirit that I felt compelled to make a gingerbread house. Here are some pictures:

I am pretty proud of this house, considering that I’m not really great at crafts. For example, I’ve already endured the Great Cross-Stitch Fiasco of November in the time since I’ve been at home. Also, I’m really not very good at assembling things other than Target bookshelves. But I found this gingerbread house to be very easy to put together, and that is due to one thing: the EZ Build ™ Tray, patent pending (http://www.createatreat.com/index_files/Page619.htm).

Just use the EZ Build ™ Tray once and you will understand why the gingerbread house people want to get a patent on this baby, and they deserve every cent that this revolutionary design will bring them. Because the gingerbread house people have done all of us craft-inept people a great service. All you have to do is line the ridges of the tray with icing, then stick the walls in. The tray helps hold up the walls. Plus, it provides an easy way to set up your gingerbread house anywhere. Thanks, EZ Build ™ Tray (patent pending)!

The icing is really the most difficult medium for an artist to work with, if I may be so bold as to call myself an artist here. But the icing is not very delicious. While it was later suggested to me that perhaps I wasn’t supposed to be eating the icing, I didn’t know what else to do with the “mistakes” I made with the icing. I got rid of the mistakes the only way I knew how. I ate them.

Anyways, I’m especially proud of a few touches that I’ll share with you. First, you might notice that the path to the house is shaved chocolate; that was a design all my own that I devised to make the white sprees stand out a little more. Second, I helped to create the supplemental Styrofoam side panels that hold the trees and the people that came in the kit. While I love the EZ Build ™ Tray (patent pending), it only had two slots to place these items in, and the slots were positioned in such a way that they blocked the view of my beautiful house. In creating the supplemental side panels, I also created that snow that you see around the house.

I have a few tips for anyone who might be considering building a gingerbread house:
-If you use a kit, don’t worry about running out of candy. I had this fear, but they do give you a lot.
-To get in the proper mindset, pretend you are Jimmy Carter and that you are building a Habitat for Humanity house. I did this for awhile, but I started to feel too sorry for my imaginary low-income family, because it would be kind of a tacky house to live in. Plus they weren’t providing any sweat equity. Plus we didn’t have any peanuts to help me get in the mood.
-Don’t eat the icing.
-Be ready to get icing and candy in really weird places. Don’t wear nice clothes. Don’t take a shower before construction.