Festive Season Gingerbread

First up, Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all my lovely blog readers.

Things have been super quiet here on the blog - but in my home it has been crazy busy. Getting ready for Christmas Day is always super fun, but it really makes a girl busy in pretty much every hour of each day.

I had a lot of Christmas sewing, shopping and cooking to take care of, and I've taken a few pictures, but I won't share them today - I forgot to take a couple of pictures of some gifts I made, so I'd like to track them down and share soon.

Today I wanted to share this year's Gingerbread House. Each year it's a tradition to get busy baking, and this year was no exception. Shay even came over to help in the dark hours ... I'm sure she'll share details at some point :-) ...

Here is this year's creation:

I just loved putting it together, and it was so much fun to have Shay's help. This year I had planned a much more elaborate construction, but I didn't really leave myself enough time. This colonial style house is my favourite stand by, but I think I'll have a go at the fancy house while I'm on holidays - and Marty says he's going to help too!

Laziness and lack of time meant that rather than used crushed up boiled sweets to make the windows, this time I used cut up gelatine sheets and glued them in place with icing. IMHO it looks really good, and the criss-cross pattern gives it a leaded glass look. As I always do, I've used a little battery operated string of LED's to light up the interior. Next year we're thinking we might make up some furniture and a Christmas tree to put inside. How fun!

Should you like to have a go at making your own gingerbread house, I've put my favourite gingerbread and royal icing recipe on my website as a free download. I haven't put a template up there yet, but I will work on a simple one for you. Just give me some time.

Have fun and let me know how you go!