Gingerbread Houses

As if I didn't have enough on my plate this holiday season...I added a gingerbread house to it (make that two gingerbread houses)!

I thought it would be fun to invite some friends of ours, Brandon & Jayme, over to decorate gingerbread houses after we shot some maternity photos for them.  I wasn't about to go the kit-route, but I had also never built a gingerbread house from the ground up either.  I am a perfectly good baker...how difficult could it be?

We made the dough and rolled & cut the side and roof pieces one night.

The baking process took  f o o r e e v e r r  since there were so many batches of cookie sheets rotating through the oven baking at a low temp for such a long time.  Man, did my house smell heavenly though :)
Tucker helped by hoovering up little pieces of falling dough, good boy!

The next evening I made cement frosting, and we glued the sides together.  This step in the process was more challenging than I had expected.  Everything had to line up just right, which was hard when working with irregular cookies.  I tried to hard to cut and transfer everything perfectly, but the parchment paper underneath warped a little as they baked.  Oh well, I got it to work, and I let the walls sit overnight before attaching the roof pieces. I let the roof sit while we went to take baby-bump pictures.


When we came back they were ready for decorations.
 
The plates cost me a buck a piece at the Goodwill...way cuter than a foil-wrapped tray and I didn't mind sending the plate home with them and not getting it back.  I also picked up a good assortment of candy decor at the dollar store.

I wish I would have taken a group picture of all of us, or at least one of us working away...all I've got is the after photo of our house + dog house.

We all had a lot of fun, and I think this will have to become an annual tradition for the four (almost five) of us!