Gingerbread House 2016

You may recall that as a family project my children and I committed harrowing acts of gingerbread construction last holiday season, creating the quaint little hovel seen above, a domicile that both Hansel and Gretel would obviously love… to eat.

And then gravity promptly destroyed it within minutes after the pictures were taken.

Demonstrating our annual inability to learn from our mistakes, we did it again this year.  This time with a little less frosting and sugar, to save my diabetes from the consequences of my lack of self control  After all, if the gingerbread house falls down, you have to eat it, right?

So I started with a cheaper kit with far less added sugar froo-froos.  Less temptation to eat the extras while working, don’t ya know.

The Princess and I used butter knives to cut grooves in the end pieces, thinking in our own smug little way, “I bet that will help keep the thing from falling down before we get a decent chance to play with it and take pictures.”

Then we set about decorating the pieces.

And as we put it together, I thought of one more creatively goofy trick in a vain attempt to hold the roof on.  After all, we had completely forgotten to put notches in the roof pieces before weighing them down with icing and gumdrops.  Voila!  Crosspieces made with uncooked fettuccine noodles!

See the noodles?  Notice how they transfer weight stress directly onto the load-bearing walls?

And before you could say, “This is a wonderful little house for a witch to live in, one who eats children!” and make Hansel wet his pants, we had a frosted gingerbread house.

And then we began to wonder why the little witch house was so angry-looking.  We found out in about half an hour, the time it took this one to fall down and get eaten.