♥ Gingerbread ♥

Is there anything better than making gingerbread men at Christmas?  We have had the best time making our gingerbread house and eating all the extras.  First here is a pic of my display area with some new lighting :) I think that's all my Christmas decorating finished now...But we still have 18 days left:)

So here we are making the gingerbread

(Don't worry Eliza's fringe has finally been cut!  I don't    

   know why she never has her clasps on in my photos!) 

He is usually fed up by this stage :)

Master chef

Washing up :) 

Here's our butter, sugar and syrup melting nicely 

Finlay rolling out the dough                                

Eliza eating all the dough :) 

Yummy!

Our house shapes cut out and baked

 We left these to cool over night....then the real fun began...

It took A LOT of icing to hold the sides up.  And some mini cups to lend a helping hand - already this house was not looking as lovely as I had first planned :) 

It's a very snowy scene...brr

 oops - we cut "windows" out of the roof sections before we realised :) haha sky lights on a gingerbread house?

Again we left this for a few hours to set before fitting the roof...more fun!

 Here I realised I should have made sure all the pieces we cut were actually the same size - even though we used cutters the sections were all slightly out so the roof had a few gaping holes :) Never mind just add LOTS more icing!  Snowy scene just had a snow storm...

Then time to decorate

 Buttons for a roof, smarties for the door, a candy cane for the top of the door and a milky way magic star for the tree top :) And mini mummy, Finlay and Eliza  enjoying the snow :) All sprinkled with icing sugar for a snow topped gingerbread house.

Oh dear the sides are worse!...loveheart candy cane shape 

   Finished off with a Merry Christmas ribbon

 Not the beautiful gingerbread house I had imagined but we are so happy with our homemade looking house

And we made plenty Christmas shapes to keep us going until we have shown everyone and we decide to eat it.  I bags a roof section :D 

Merry Christmas from the Craigs :D 

I found lots of ideas on pinterest for gingerbread houses but mine looks nothing like the art that other people have managed :) 

See chocolate gingerbread recipe - miss out cocoa for a lighter gingerbread house like the one above