gingerbread

It's been a while since I made a gingerbread house the honest way.  A few times in my college career, I've participated in gingerbread house decorating at D2 (and our house even won third place in the competition one year I think) but in those cases, the houses were assembled and the candy was laid out gloriously along a table for everyone to choose from.  Fun, and easy, but not as authentic as it gets.  I've decorated them at home, after at least being in the house while my dad prepared the dough and crammed it into the cast iron molds and assembled the houses sturdily enough for young hands to push and prod while bedazzling the things with candy.  It's been a while since we did it that way, though.  Anyway, the other night, I was talking with a family friend and she volunteered her daughter to make and decorate gingerbread creations with me, and we worked it out and went ahead and did it today (after I took some portraits for a friend--will be making a post of those eventually).  She made the dough from scratch and brought it over and we hand-rolled and hand-cut our pieces (which I am still so proud of--never done anything quite so homemade before and I didn't even make the dough) and baked them and hand assembled our houses (each of us did our own without help which is also a small feat).  Hours and hours later and pizza and wine later, we finished them up and I'm so pleased with the results!

Left: mine (unfinished), right: hers

Hers

Hers

Mine

Mine (the board my dad gave me to make it on was so big that I had to fill the space with frosting trees)

Mine

All digital, taken with Nikon D80

Portraits to come, not sure when though because I'm going on a tour of the White House tomorrow (!!!) and will probably have hundreds of photos from that.