For the last few years, I've tried to make my own gingerbread house. I like making authentic gingerbread (even though I hate the smell of molasses) and using real ingredients to try to get them to stick together is challenging but fun!

Every year, including this one, that has been a mistake...or rather, a failure.

This year, I drew up the plans with my father, trying to figure out the best design. I wanted a flat roof, which meant it was going to take seven separate pieces of gingerbread to get the house put together. I came up with the general measurements, sketched out the final product, and got to it.

We took the gingerbread, covered it with wax paper, covered it with our design, then used a toothpick to poke out the corners of each piece. Then we used a knife to cut it, place it on the cookie sheet, then remove the wax paper. This was problematic the first time because the gingerbread had become too warm and we could barely get it off the counter.

Then those burnt, which meant they ended up smaller than the next set I made after refrigerating the gingerbread for 10 minutes.

Then I had more than we had anticipated leftover, so I made a bunch of nonsense like a ladder to the roof and a tree that was nothing but branches.

So, the point of being so painstakingly careful with the original cutouts was so I wouldn't have to do more cutting later. But what do you know, I had to cut them to make them fit a little better. Which meant, at the end of it, I needed a lot of icing to fill up those obvious holes.

Then the icing warmed up so the cute design I was going to do on the roof to be snow? It was just vanilla icing spread all over the top.

Things kind of fell apart from there. I did a design on the roof, made the door, and attempted to set up some other things, but that didn't work out very well. I'm learning that despite my desire to do gingerbread houses "new and improved" minimalist art works better.

[Not pictured: a bare tree I tried to make, a snowman I tried to freehand, and a dog house I cut out but then got too tired to put together]

For all of my complaining, though, I was pleasantly surprised as how my gingerbread house went. The only thing I really have to complain about is that I may not eat it, and it seems like a waste. I feel really guilty for using so much and not consuming it, so maybe next year I'll just try to do a bake sale for the local Cats R US or something.

I'd love to hear some of your gingerbread / gingerbread house horror stories if you have them!