The Cthulhu Christmas Tree

FIRST! I would'nt be able to bring myself to eat these, I'd feel guilty for months

loved the gingerbread ghetto! i'm all about the cookie whores

I've seen the life-size gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian. It was incredibly detailed!

Here are some hot, spicy tips for making g'bread houses:
1. make a big sheet of gingerbread-- roll it out right on wax paper or parchment the size of the cookie sheet. then when it comes out of the oven, quickly cut out the pieces using the paper pattern pieces you have ready. (the g'bread is soft at this point-- gets hard as it cools)
2. stick the pieces together with toothpicks.
3. Use royal icing. it is basically uncooked meringue; has eggwhites. It is super sticky and dries hard as a rock, almost. It is more an engineering material than a food. It also holds the decorations on tight.
4. new geeky idea-- make lego guy gingerbread men to go with. Heck, make a gingerbread laptop with only m's and s's for keys. (m&m's and sprints or whatever they are called)

Yes! I remember making a house" for Holiday Houses for Homecare. And the "competition" was fierce. I was up against people who had the previous year did a scene out of Dinotopia. And people who made quality like that White House. I was a beginner and thrown into it because of the baking course I was in.
I ended up doing Angkor Wat. It took a little over a month, and in the end, I did not win any sort of ribbon, nor did anyone have a clue as to what Angkor Wat was. :/

The Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC holds the National Gingerbread House Competition annually:

http://www.romanticasheville.com/gingerbread.htm

If you are anywhere in the area between November and January it is worth your time.

Here are the photos from the 2008 Competition:

http://peakdefinition.smugmug.com/Events/652711

I want to be the gaint to eat, I mean destroy those houses.

A serial killer house is "highly entertaining"? Ditto for prison rape and stabbing? Does anything become entertaining if done in gingerbread or does one of the victims have to be a prostitute and/or a convict?

I was kinda turned off by the gingerbread serial killer house. The prison one was just sad.

Ah, I feel the holiday spirit swell when I look at these cool pictures.

The Seattle gingerbreads are an annual tradition - designed by local architects and hosted at the Sheraton Hotel, the displays raise money for the Northwest Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation . Photos from past displays:

Sorry - here are the links:
http://www.jdrfnorthwest.org/gingerbread/
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=gingerbread&w=45206671%40N00

if you want a quick and easy way to make a house - use Poptarts. Nice ready made squares and glue together with frosting.

Dugg.

That looks like something I'll have to do sometime.
Mount Rainier is definitely outside-the-box.
Ha ha Poptarts. I used to eat those. Great idea. Some even are already frosted!
Now, I wonder what happens in the end; when display time is up? Everyone gets to "eat house"? Demolition with a giant Gobstopper wrecking ball?
Just give it a Splat!

Shoot! I bought a kit last year. I have been told that I'm a pretty artistic person - I make new ornaments for everyone as stocking stuffers and homemade treats for presents for the special people in my life. But, I am here to tell you, both my husband AND I tried to put that booger together and it came out looking a lot like Mt. Rainier without meaning to!
So, I took the chicken route and tossed the gingerbread 'glop', baked up some pumkin-rum cake, cut out cubes and thin(1" thick)squares for the roofs, trimmed off some of the cubes so the two sides of the roof would fit, frosted and decorated each "gingerbread" house with different candies.
They were a hit! So, I made them agin, this year. Hmm...tradition starting to bloom?

Making a gingerbread house can be frustrating if it falls apart before the frosting dries. But it is easy to build a really strong gingerbread house using a cardboard box to reinforce the sides and roof. The cardboard is invisible once decorated, and best of all, the house is ready to decorate within 15 minutes!

This link gives instructions (with pictures).

--Dean

Sorry - here is the link to the foolproof gingerbread house construction technique:

http://picasaweb.google.com/deanpomerleau/FoolproofGingerbreadHouse?feat=directlink

look tasty,, can i eat it... hehehehe... make me hungry...

I have several gingerbread houses, but only 3 of them had pictures taken http://www.theinnbetween.net/gingerbread.html

Everything is built to scale as if it were an actual house.