This article is not a step by step instruction sheet, but more of a guide from my own experiences....what works....what works better, etc. Also, I'm not a purist....when I say Gingerbread House, I really mean houses decorated with candies. Baked gingerbread would be great, but we have taken the shorter route using other items for our houses.

You could bake your own gingerbread which I've never done but I would suspect is the most difficult way to make a house. The graham cracker "brick" works well, but is time consuming. You need to construct the walls and roof, let them dry, assemble the house, let that dry before you can begin decorating. The house definitely needs constructing before you engage the children to decorate.

The last houses we built were cardboard houses in two or three sizes. These worked so well that I doubt we'll ever do the graham cracker "bricks" again. However, you could take the cardboard frame and "glue" the graham cracker pieces to it for the same look, plus it would be sturdy to handle and would probably carry over for a year or two in the freezer. We made two houses last year and made two batches of Royal Icing.

If you place your cardboard house on a cake board, use a large dollop of icing to "glue" the house down. Frost the entire house in white icing. Keep the icing in the bowl covered with a damp kitchen towel. Once you've decided on decoration, spoon about a cup of icing into a cake decorating bag with a tip or if that isn't available, use a small ziplock freezer bags and snip the corner off with scissors. Freezer bags works better and are more durable. Candy coating works well to decorate the house also but must be handled more carefully. It can be melted in the microwave, but only melt 2-3 blocks at a time as it cools and hardens very quickly. Be careful when rewarming candy coating that you have spooned into bags because it gets hot very quickly and will melt the bag.