Om Nom Nom, Gingerbread!

Well hello!  I hope that all of you had fantastic holidays and are slowly starting to get back into the swing of everyday life.  It's been nice here with the craziness that is the holiday season over and no plans to go anywhere or do anything major in the next couple of months.  For the first time since The Husband and I moved it feels like we can breathe and figure out what life looks like for us here.

Before we completely move on to expecting snow, praying desperately for summer to arrive, or whatever it is people look forward to after the holidays I wanted to look back on one of my favorite aspects of the holidays this year.  Gingerbread Houses!!!

Early in December my sister-in-law was able to come up and visit us for a number of days.  This in and of itself was fantastic but seeing as how both of us are pretty much sugar junkies it made sense that something special needed to happen. :)

Step 1: Load your kitchen table with mountains of candy 

Step 2: Use a serrated knife to saw gingerbread into house like shapes

Step 3: Use melted white chocolate to glue gingerbread together

 Seriously though, melted white chocolate is my new favorite secret!  Or not so much a secret anymore I suppose...  It hardens quickly enough that the whole process can be done in a reasonable amount of time and it tastes good, so if you actually consume said house you won't totally hate yourself.  It's definitely still easier to attach candy using canned frosting so it's not a catch all in the gingerbread house icing world.

Step 4: Step back and admire your handiwork 

Step 5: Give the roof some texture, some snow, some weight, er, just go ahead and coat it in chocolate

Step 6: Use needle nose pliers to cut twizzler strings into "lights" and attach to the house

Step 7: That's right, there are lights

Final Product 1: Admire your handiwork some more and realize you may be slightly to old/ocd to fully enjoy dousing your house in any sort of candy that can't methodically be placed evenly on all sides...

Final Product 2: Relish in the knowledge that if ever there is a need for tree stumps to be made out of tootsie rolls you know who to call

Final Product 3: Realize that you too spent most of your time making precise additions to the house but at least is looks like a mansion

In spite of my need to make my gingerbread house look neat and orderly I don't think I'll ever grow out of my desire to make them and am super excited about the discovery of melted white chocolate as glue particularly when the time will come to make these with small children.

Happy belated holidays and thanks for reading!