Gingerbread Houses, Melbourne style

We make gingerbread houses every Christmas, usually as a fun way to mess around with the cousins. 

Of course, everyone's getting bigger, and this year we weren't even with the cousins. 

But we still made gingerbread houses! 

Here's three made by me, Jonathan and Thomas.

Here's Jonathan working on his. We all worked out that the cool slope-sided pattern was pretty hard to bring together. But we all managed.

And here's a tiny house, with a lego monkey for scale.

Gingerbread house, apartment style

We like to make a gingerbread house every Christmas. Well, there's a double batch of tasty gingerbread dough chilling in Nana's fridge, but it's hard to know when we'll get there to make it into a house. But the easy kits were on sale in the supermarket. So, here we are building a village.

Then we decide to abandon the nasty tasting lollies provided, and replace them with gummy bears!

Ta dah!

The building in the top left has a helipad in top. Of course.

And just when we had made our own dragon...

We found these cookie cutters. Honestly not as good as OUR dragon, but a good activity.

What's better than a gingerbread castle?

Well, a gingerbread DRAGON, of course!

Thomas developed this, Catriona added some ideas, and Jonathan insists he helped too.

And we haven't eaten it.

Finished gingerbread house

Here it is all finished!

Gingerbread castle is finished!

Here's the gang with the finished castle. Left to right, we have ... Jessamy, Emma, Xanthe, Thomas, Mitchell, Jonathan, James and Catriona. Connor was ... somewhere else.

Gingerbread castle part 3 - still not ruined

Yes, turns out, a team of three teenage girls does a better job of decorating a castle than a rabble of younger kids. Let's keep it classy, ladies.

Gingerbread castle part 2 - looking quite sophisticated

Yes, marking the brickwork on the gingerbread was a good idea. Catriona, Emma and Xanthe assemble the Petit Chateau de Diabetes.

Gingerbread castle - looking good!

Here's some of the pieces of our gingerbread castle before baking. Let's see how we can mess this up now!

Gingerbread under construction

I think you can see where this was going - it just never got there. Never mine, it was a tray full of tasty biscuit with icing and lollies. It got shared with a lot of people and didn't get finished.

The gingerbread Coliseum

And here it is in all its glory. I worked hard to get the inner pieces to be all the same size. They can't have varied by more than, let's say, 5cm. Which is not that precise, now I come to think of it.

This year's gingerbread house

We made our annual gingerbread house! This year, the cousins are scattered more than usual, so we took the makings of the house to Carol's lovely house in Mandurah, where Russell and the kids are hanging out.

And here's the house. Can you tell what it is? Can you? Yes, you're quite right, it's an interpretation of the Coliseum of Rome. With smarties. And rather a lot of snakes.

Left to right, Jonathan, Jessamy, Thomas, James, Catriona, Xanthe.

This year's gingerbread men

Yesterday Thomas, Jonathan and I made gingerbread. The cutters were a cute set with a torso, and interchangeable arms and legs. Naturally, one of our guys was carefully made with a detached arm. Notice how I manage to get a wide range of emotions into the faces - both smiley and frowny? Oh, yes, and most of them had swords and shields too.