Gingerbread Houses

Freshman year of college, my roommate and I held a gingerbread house making party in our dorm room.  We bought graham crackers, icing, a boatload of candy, and borrowed a few knives from the cafeteria.  A few friends came over and we had a lot of fun reliving our kindergarten days and eating way too much candy.  The next year, with more space and a kitchen, we added latkes to festivities, and the Annual Latke and Gingerbread House Party was born.  Though my roommate and I no longer live with, or even close to, one another, the tradition continues!  This year my boyfriend and I hosted the 8th annual party, and it was a hit!  He's an amazing chef, so he handled the latkes.  There were normal potato and onion, sweet potato, and purple potato and carrot, as well as three homemade sauces.  Needless to say, this party has become a lot classier since its inception.

We also decided to make the gingerbread house building part more exciting by turning it into a competition (this is where the crafting part comes in, sort of...).  People could work alone or with one other person, the house had to fit on no more than two regular-sized paper plates, and all structural pieces had to be edible.  First place won a hat made by me and second place won a loaf of bread made by by boyfriend. 

Though everyone did a good job (well, almost everyone), a few of our friends took this very seriously and spent the entire week before the party planning and buying any necessary candy to supplement the stores we provided.  First place was the Winter Chateau, a beautiful two story structure with snow cap walls, a reese's pieces front walk, and a twizzler and marshmallow chimney (pictured in the forefront below).

Second place I unfortunately didn't get a good picture of, but it was called "Occupy North Pole." You can see it in the back of the first picture above.  There was a tent city, Keebler cookie protesters with signs that read "Suck Fanta" and "I am an ELF and I am the 99%," and a chocolate Santa spraying a protester with pepper spray.

And, just because it's my blog, here's a picture of the house my friend Zina and I made, even though we didn't win:

Stay tuned to see the hats I make for the winners.