It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, at Chez Wright.
Even if the tree isn’t quite finished.
Mid-way through decorating we downed baubles to crack on with this year’s Gingerbread house masterpiece.
One of the many advantages of reducing Christmas gift shopping, is there’s plenty of opportunity for homemade festive fun at the weekend.
As an advocate of creating memories and preserving traditions, the Wright gingerbread house is a must-do family-affair.
This year the lovely folks from Sykes Cottages sent me a rather nice gingerbread house kit. I’ll explain why at the end of this post…
Little hands couldn’t wait to open the box and look inside.
A quick read of the instructions and away we went. No planning. We just got stuck in – seeing where our imaginations would take us.
Apparently you should wait 30 minutes for the structure to glue together with the icing, before decorating.
Did we?
No – we skipped that bit. Hence the roof kind of didn’t fit together quite as expected. No problem, a little iced snow on the top sorted it.
Did the rest of the build run smoothly? Erm…no.
Heavy-handed Mom (me) accidentally decapitated the edible boy figure.
And a lot of the sweets mysteriously disappeared whilst work was being carried out on reacquainting the boy with his head at the other end of the kitchen.
All back on track, except for 5-year-old fingers helping themselves to the iced snow.
I considered cordoning off the section that had been tampered with, but decided a little Kid-lick wouldn’t hurt.
Daniel’s handmade snowman sugar model was placed next to the bit he’d sampled instead.
That’ll be the section reserved just for him when we break it up on Christmas day. Leah’s hand-crafted sugar snowman is on the other lick-free side.
(If anyone is interested in learning more on how to do simple sugar modelling I’d be happy to write a tutorial here at the blog. I’m never sure how much interest there is in such posts)
We’re all rather pleased with the end result.
Why did I receive a gingerbread house kit from Sykes cottages?
They are running a competition and I am one of 10 bloggers participating.
The winner will receive £250 worth of Amazon Gift Vouchers.
If the Kids, and I, win I will make a £100 cash donation to the wonderful charity Believe In Magic.
The next post will be about how and why I donate at Christmas. I will introduce Believe In Magic and explain why they are my chosen charity this year.
Do you have any gingerbread masterpieces planned this year?
Oh and just in case you fancy building your very own real-life gingerbread house check this out…I could live in one, I’d just have to stop a certain 5-year-old eating us out of house and home…
Infographic by Sykes Cottages
We just made a gingerbread house from a kit last week. I’ve tried many times to make them from scratch and the results have been terrible. Told my oldest we wouldn’t be eating it until his aunt arrived but the damp here got to it so we have started nibbling. Delicious.
Hope you win the contest!
Thanks Rachel… That’s the only problem with exposing gingerbread to air. It doesn’t always last the distance. Guess what? Finally got to the post office haha! I’m hopeless!
We just made a gingerbread house from a kit last week. I’ve tried many times to make them from scratch and the results have been terrible. Told my oldest we wouldn’t be eating it until his aunt arrived but the damp here got to it so we have started nibbling. Delicious.
Hope you win the contest!
Thanks Rachel… That’s the only problem with exposing gingerbread to air. It doesn’t always last the distance. Guess what? Finally got to the post office haha! I’m hopeless!
Looks like fun! I would like to see a post on sugar modelling. Love the infographic – especially the Skittles driveway!
The infographic is fab, isn’t it? I’ll post something about modelling going forward… May go with a snowman!
Looks like fun! I would like to see a post on sugar modelling. Love the infographic – especially the Skittles driveway!
The infographic is fab, isn’t it? I’ll post something about modelling going forward… May go with a snowman!
i would love to read your tutorial on sugar paste modelling please x
Okey dokey… Watch this space!
i would love to read your tutorial on sugar paste modelling please x
Okey dokey… Watch this space!
Sounds like you all had a blast! I hope you win the contest. Yes please do a tutorial on modeling. Enjoy this time with the kids as the years will soon come when the kids will be grown and not want to do such things anymore.
Time flies! I remind myself of that whenever I’ve had a tiring day. Grey hen Rubin has a great saying “the days are long but the years are short”. So true!
Sounds like you all had a blast! I hope you win the contest. Yes please do a tutorial on modeling. Enjoy this time with the kids as the years will soon come when the kids will be grown and not want to do such things anymore.
Time flies! I remind myself of that whenever I’ve had a tiring day. Grey hen Rubin has a great saying “the days are long but the years are short”. So true!
Looks amazing! Thinking of trying one over here this Christmas (maybe without snow? Keeping it real 🙂 ) but, if time doesn’t allow, we might just stick with our lemon stars again this year. It just looks like so much fun building a gingerbread house! And sugar modelling tutorial would be fab!
Haha! We were talking about what Xmas in NZ would like. We may do it one year. Reckoned it’d be BBQ weather!
Looks amazing! Thinking of trying one over here this Christmas (maybe without snow? Keeping it real 🙂 ) but, if time doesn’t allow, we might just stick with our lemon stars again this year. It just looks like so much fun building a gingerbread house! And sugar modelling tutorial would be fab!
Haha! We were talking about what Xmas in NZ would like. We may do it one year. Reckoned it’d be BBQ weather!
I agree – a little kid-lick is absolutely to be expected. If you come to my house – don’t eat any of the wise men 😉
Thanks for the heads up 😉
I agree – a little kid-lick is absolutely to be expected. If you come to my house – don’t eat any of the wise men 😉
Thanks for the heads up 😉