Gingerbread Projects Past

This post is essentially about me reminiscing about past Gingerbread Projects with my girls. We've been doing Gingerbread Projects since they were little. Every 2nd year in the '80s and '90s, Canadian Living Magazine would have a gingerbread project that we faithfully attempted to reproduce. In alternate years, we'd look to other magazines for ideas or create our own patterns.  These days, we come up with a plan and google our little fingers off to see if there's something that already exists that we can riff off of. Future themes include Whoville, and Dr. Who's TARDIS. Or maybe a truck and motorcycle for little Mr. L.

Here's the outside wall of our family room. It amuses us to use Life Savers for windows that are opaque. The crushed candies are placed in the window holes, on parchment paper and baked for one minute.  This year Tegs used Werther's which are an acceptable substitute.

Here's the inside of the photo above. The stockings are hung over the fireplace with care and the carpet looks delicious. I really like the Christmas tree. And we enjoy adding in the little details like the fire in the fireplace and the picture over the mantel.

This photo is rather faded, but it's a carousel with reindeer.

This is one of my favourites. It's a replica of our house. The rose that climbs up the wall was made of miniature marshmallows. And you can't see it, but Laura put individual sprinkles for the Christmas lights along the roof line.  She was always awesome at the details.  We even got her "cooking tweezers" to make it easier for her to do the detailing.

This is Santa's sleigh.

This is from a Canadian Living magazine pattern if I remember correctly. The trees are ice cream cones that we iced. Some very cool details. And the chair really rocked.

This was the year Martha Stewart Living's project was made of sugar cubes. To make it properly you needed to use sugar cubes that were rectangular "tablets", not square cubes and had to be ordered from the US at quite an expense. We didn't have the $ or the inclination to order the sugar tablets so we used regular cubes and this is what happened. The proportions were a little different from Martha's but we put real votive candles in the towers and the light shone through the sugar. It was so pretty.

The girls make their own projects now. I believe the roof is mint chocolate layers. The chimney is my fave - licorice.

The detail on this one is a dead giveaway that it's Laura's.

Santa's workshop from the outside

The back side, with a stone chimney and fruit rollup tile roof.

If only we had pictures of the nativity scene and the train. Or the house we made with Julien. He made a hollow chimney and loaded it with extra candies. And it had a lake made from blue fruit rollups if I recall. Good times.

Update: March 2019
I found a picture of the train! And as an added bonus the fondant wrapped cake.

If you look carefully we had all sorts of cool details. Each car is carrying a load. There are wreaths on the engine and caboose. You can't really see the engineer, but he's there. And the marshmallow smoke is awesome.
The attention to detail makes it clear Laura had a hand in the decorating process!

This was a Christmas cake that Krista wrapped in fondant. Not gingerbread but a fun project!