The Making of Gingerbread House

What is Christmas without a little drama to take you out of that dreamy path of preparations for the festive time? Ours was last night, yes, the night before gingerbread house construction. 

Gary heard a strange sound in the kitchen and went to investigate, with Molly around, anything could happen. The washing machine had decided to fill itself up with water. It was switched off. Needless to say, there was water everywhere. Panic set in for a brief moment and then it was action stations.

Claudia shouted. ‘Turn the water off.’

Alex shouted. ’Stop barking Molly.’

I could not find the stop valve and Gary took over, finding it and Claudia told him to turn it off. Water was everywhere but it was only water so with Gary’s help the floor was dried and we all took a moment to reflect on our washing machine and its seeming desire to be replaced. More on the washing machine saga in my next blog, such tension!

Gingerbread House making day

After all the greetings were concluded, Susan gave out the house-building kits acquired from the fine establishment who stock them and is happy to sell you as many as you want. In our case it was 5, one was gluten-free, I know, never knew that was a thing, the rest were made from biscuits and icing sugar. 

The first bricks were laid by 4 pm, Julia and Peter stormed through to the roof stage before anyone else had finished unpacking. 

Like all good occasions, this one very quickly turned into chaos. Elle, a dog owned by the Fays tried to take the roof from the table to eat and knocked over Michael’s full cup of tea, covering the unread instructions in hot tea. No one reads the instructions, so no real damage. 

Michael, who works for an eco-friendly construction company and Gemma, who works for an insurance company decided that a house with underfloor heating was the best way to go. A dream team you would think, but alas construction and insurance are not always good partners and you can see where that goes, ginger bread biscuits and icing sugar do not go well with underfloor heating and they had major structural failures before they realised the underfloor heating was melting the icing. 

Everyone settled down to building their dream house again but by that stage Molly, this one owned by the Middle Smiths, had, had enough of Elle and a fight started in earnest. More distractions and after suitable scolding the offending Elle, work moved on. It very soon became apparent that the instructions were there for a purpose and a suitable period of calm and quiet returned as the instructions were read and the building started a new.

There were four teams, the Fays (Peter and Julia), Michael and Gemma, the big news there is, that Gemma is no longer Vegan and enjoys meat and poultry as much as the next person and she also has a friend. Getting onto the other teams, the Middle Smiths (Gary and Alex) and then Susan and the roving building control inspector Claudia, made up the fourth team. 

Shoddy workmanship and dodgy cheap cement caused the Fays house to collapse, much laughter and then the timely intervention of our expert building inspector soon had them going again, this time applying cement of a quality required by the building regulations.

The quality of some of the decorations was, to put it mildly, poor but everyone was completed by 5:30. Photos were taken and we cleared the table for much-needed savoury snacks and the odd alcoholic beverage in celebration.

All in all a great afternoon spent with family in preparation for Christmas.

All houses are shown below and I would like your input on which is the best. They are numbered so pop your choice into the comments and we will announce the winner in my next blog.