I Felt Like a Wee Little Contractor, Minus the Tool Belt and Coin Slot (With Photos!)

I had to make a gingerbread house for work. (Because what professional workplace doesn't think having suckers make gingerbread houses is a good idea.) Figuring that it was going to be a nightmare of Boschian proportions, I intended to live-blog it. However, it was actually sort of easy and delightful, and took only an hour. That's because I made the cheat-y Martha Stewart versions. (That's right, Martha advocated a shortcut. Gasp and clutch your pearls at will.) Namely, you dispense with the, uh, gingerbread, and use graham crackers for sheetrock. Here's how my sweet little subdivision came in on time and almost under budget.

1. The materials. Annoyance? You've got to shell out for multiple bags of candy to get the roughly two pieces per bag you need for your decorations. By the way, you use a steak knife to cut the corners off of the graham crackers that form the front and back of the house.



2. Melted the white chocolate chips in the microwave. This is your joint compound. Martha advocated using a type of icing that requires dried egg white powder. I live near the Spanish Safeway. I'm lucky they have apples. Melted chocolate chips would have to do. Squeezed from a little disposable bag, they worked just fine as it turns out.


3. Decorate. My Significant Other came home from work at this point and at first sort of chuckled at me, then got a little closer and attempted to steal my building materials (for which he received a swift slap on the hand) and then suggested I add a snowman. "Capital idea," I said. "Make it." So he took off his dress shirt and sat down and made a snowman. All the while giving me a sheepish, "I'm not gay or anything but this is kind of fun," look. And his snowman was awesome.

We had a blast. They ended up being the little houses on Irony Lane.