Our gingerbread convent ended up taking us three days to complete. Aye! Here are the highlights:
Our design was inspired by the Convento de Santa Catalina in Arequipa, Peru. We wanted it to have an inner courtyard like this. We also included the white paint around the archways in our version.
We used this recipe. It also has instruction for cutting our your pieces and assembly. Recommended.
Yes, I burned one of our pieces. The inner rectangle also turned out to be too small, so Scott had to make some careful changes.
We used too many eggs in our first batch of frosting, which made it runnier but also more cement-like. Not necessarily a recommended thing to do, but it turned out fine for us.
Scott was a master decorator. He has a steady hand.
My favorite decoration is the water fountain and surrounding front patio. I also love the wreaths. And the Nerd lights.
Here’s the entire convent in all of its glory.
Super, duper fun holiday project. Yes, getting your Christmas shopping done early has major benefits.
so awesome! love that u two did it together. can’t wait to see it saturday
Heather – That is hilarious!
Yeah, I was the designer. Scott was the builder. We both decorated, but Scott was better at it than me! Steady hands.
Autumn!! Excited for you two to come over!!
This turned out so cool Al. I love that Scott helped. Brian would NEVER do that.
P.S. After my previous comment I shared the link to this with Brian and his response was, “It’s like a grown man playing with Legos.”
Allison (and Scott) – that is frickin’ awesome!!!! I had visions of making a gingerbread house this holiday season – then downgraded it to just making a ghetto graham cracker version (you know, recession and all) – and now…well, now I’m stuck in my house b/c of the snow.
So…are you going to eat that at some point???
I don’t think we’ll eat it… the mix for the gingerbread isn’t very sweet. It’s sure is strong though. Hard as a rock. (Um, especially the parts I burned.)
I do see myself pulling bits of candy off of it!!
p.s. Our original idea was to do a ‘barrio’ of graham cracker houses.
So fun.
That’s a great gingerbread house, nice work. I’m particularly fond of the picture with the pliers which is a sign of quality construction.