Building gingerbread houses should be fun and easy, right? If we’re going to get complicated lets do it in the decor, not the building! After years of building and baking our own gingerbread we’ve come up with a few things we do every year to make it as easy as possible.
First off, you might notice that the gingerbread pieces that come in the box, or out of your oven can be a bit misshapen. We’ve found that using a zester to shave down the sides helps all of the pieces fit together better. We bought this one last year and it has been a gamer changer because it shreds the gingerbread so smoothly.
Next, if you aren’t planning on eating your gingerbread house, go ahead and make your life massively easier by putting your house together with a hot glue gun. You can also use a low heat hot glue gun. We use and love this one. Our houses are always just for decor, so we whip out the hot glue gun and put all of our houses together at the same time. If you are going to eat it, melted sugar makes a great glue, but it’s definitely not something kids can help with.
When you put your house together consider what you may want your “yard” to look like. We find that the boards that come with gingerbread houses are often too small for the fun things we want to do around our houses and so we buy cake boards to use instead. These can be cut to whatever size you would like. Be sure to attach your gingerbread house to the board so that it doesn’t side around while you are decorating or moving it.
Now for decor! We watch out for things to decorate with all year long. And then when it’s getting closer to the time to decorate we buy things like gelatin sheets to use for windows, marshmallows and candies to create stained glass windows. We also buy and then reuse small light packs to create chandeliers/ “indoor” lighting as well as small trees to decorate with. These lights with wire are great for creating a chandelier. Occasionally we make trees, but sometimes a nice bottle brush tree fits the look we are going for better.
We have found a lot of great little items at Walmart. We also really like the small packs of fondant that they have at Walmart. Fondant has been a great tool for creating some really beautiful buildings. There are some cake tools that can come in handy with fondant. I have two favorites: this one creates a brick like pattern in the fondant, and this one creates sort of a diamond shingle look, both of which are great for buildings. When it’s mixed with water fondant can also make a great paint. We have used fondant to create bushes, trees, and farm animals just to name a few.
In the next few weeks I’ll be sharing our 2024 Gingerbread village along with where we got each of our houses. This year we are doing all store bought houses and buildings. So far we’ve purchased from World Market and Target. We’re planning to have our decorating day this coming week or the week after. So more fun to come!! If you have any questions about gingerbread, leave them in the comments! Below are a bunch of our different gingerbread villages.
London -> Wales -> Paris via Narrowboat over the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct
All Homemade
Santa’s Runway
The first year we designed and baked all of our gingerbread
OMG! I love seeing all the different gingerbread villages!! Great tips and tricks – thanks!! As you’re making this year’s village, take some close up photos of various items you’ve used to decorate each house. I’d love to see the creative ways you use candies, etc.
These are beautiful!
So fun to see all the villages! Although, I know there are more because I’ve been there for a couple of them. I’ve so enjoyed the sitting
together and decorating gingerbread!