Gingerbread houses

This past weekend, I was in LA with Stu for his company's holiday party and prior to going, I found out that a cooking school in the area was having a gingerbread house class. I love cooking and craft classes, but this was particularly relevant because when I was 10, I needed to make a gingerbread house for school, and it was a complete disaster. My mom set me up with graham crackers and some frosting that was much too runny, and I basically ended up with a house of cards drizzled with some frosting. 21 years later, here's a much better product. Notice my tiny wood pile to the right of the front door, which I made out of broken pretzel sticks versus the Tootsie roll version in the 3rd picture - clearly I need to be more adventurous and not so hung up on proportion with my gingerbread houses. In the right corner is a small fire pit - again, bigger would have been better. Stu was equally excited about the class, but unlike me, he had wonderful memories making a gingerbread house for school. This is his thatch-roofed house in the desert, complete with a swimming pool and rainbow slide. If you look closely at the left corner of the house, you can see the remains of a cactus made out of a pretzel log that didn't survive (the arm fell off within minutes).

This last one was the big winner of the day (in my opinion). Its owner brought in Twizzler Nibs to make the brick and used Tootsie Rolls for the wood pile. Notice the intricate garland around the fence. The woman's two daughters were in the class with us, and just as she was finishing, one of them griped, "ugh, mom, yours is so perfect." I have something to aspire to next year...