I’m doing my first gingerbread house.
It’s a pre-assembled jobbie my wife bought from a co-worker as a fund raiser so I may as well do something with it. It’s not too small, but it’s not a Barbie house either.
So, what do I do? Anybody have any suggestions? Some dos? Some don’ts? Advice? Pictures? Stories?
pre assebled? It is already put together but not decorated?
Yeah… cuts out the actual work and leaves only the fun part!
My grandmother and I used to do a gingerbread house every year - some fond memories there. I was a badass teenager (ha) before we started the tradition, but it was still something I looked forward to every year. 
We used to get a kit, too, but it was always a kit which was not pre-assembeled - icing, pieces to make walls & roof, plus candies for decorating.
Like lee, I’m not sure if the house is already put together and not decorated, or if you need to put it together. If you’re putting the walls & roof together, the biggest “danger” is the roof sliding off before the icing dries. Put the walls together first & let them set, then use a tin can (soup or whatever) to prop the roof up while it sets. For extra stability, you can put icing on the bottom of the walls to stick 'em to the base. If your house doesn’t come with a “base,” use a cookie sheet covered in tin-foil for a base. Cornflakes or extra icing can make the base into something more like a mini-winter scene.
The picture on the packaging can likely give you an idea of how to decorate your house, but really just have fun with it & be creative. If you’ve any young children around (whether your own, nieces/nephews, even children of close friends), invite 'em over to “help” - it’ll make it a memorable & fun experience for all of you.
BTW - these houses are usually fully edible, as long as you don’t use glue to stick 'em together. I’d highly recommend using icing as your “glue” & inviting anyone who helped with construction to help you demolish it after, or on, Christmas.
Sigh. Thanks for the well-meaning help, but I don’t think anyone is getting my question here.
YES. The house is pre-assembled. It’s a house. Not pieces, and not ingredients…but a full, complete house already put together. They do this now so parents don’t have to go through all the frustration of gluing the pieces together and balancing and setting them up while an anxious kid is asking “can we decorate it now?” every 4 seconds.
NO, it’s not decorated. That’s what I’m supposed to do. Thing is, I have no idea how.
I was hoping some people who have decorated ones in the past can give me some tips on what candies to use to make different things (like a mailbox, or snowman, or a front porch), and how to make those icicles that hang from the roof.
It seems that every website I find is just either assemby instructions or baking instructions. When they get to decorating they just say “have fun”.
Surely there has to be some standard techniques to this?
We did one with our daughter this past weekend. Ours was a kit, but not pre-assembled. If it’s already put together, my advice would be to think about how you want to decorate it before you start. With ours, it would have been alot easier to decorate the sides before we stuck everything together. Afterwards, it was hard to get the icing tube under the eaves properly. Unfortunately, I think your in the same boat, so maybe do the hard to reach areas 1st, so there’s no icing or candy in the way.
Oh yeah, make sure you have lots of icing to spread around - it’s the glue you’ll use to fix all the tasty bit on, so the more icing, the more goodies you can attach. You’ll probably want one of the squeeze bags cake decoraters use (a plastic one came with our kit ).
On preview, I see you’re asking for decorating suggestions. Green gum-drops make nice evergreens, and smarties can give your roof a nice tiled look. If you want icicles, I’d suggest making them out of icing on a sheet of waxed paper - let them harden, and then glue them on with more icing. Maybe rumballs or Timbits for a snowman? Cut some licorice in half for gutters, and use whole stuff for the downspouts.
If your family is anything like mine, don’t sweat getting things perfect. Half an hour after you’re done, a piece will have “accidentally” fallen off the house and need to be eaten. By the next day, you’ll have a war-zone gingerbread house, with big gaping holes where scavengers have found their favorite candies.
Have fun 
Thanks…exactly what I was looking for…
aha, you don’t have the “sugar”
Do you have the icing? Ginger bread houses are best “glued” with Royal icing. I buy dried egg whites for this purpose. I think the ratio is about 1 Tbsp dried egg whites and 1 Tbsp water to two cups powdered sugar. It will vary depending on how moist your sugar and general kitchen environment is. You beat this with a mixer for about 10 minutes to get a fluffy and somewhat firm mortar. It will be glossy and you don’t want it to be runny at all, or it will drip and not hold well.
Ideas: for a Tudor looking house, use black licorice straws.
Roofing materials: oreos, necco wafers, frosted mini wheats, starburst squares, peppermint or spearmint lozenges (red & white or green & white)
Siding materials: Fruitstripe gum makes great shutters for windows. Nerds, the afore mentioned black licorice. A yellow gumgrop is a good front door/porch light, Chocolate chessmen cookies make a good front door, lime lifesaver = christmas wreath
Yard materials: upside down Ice cream cone = tree, nerds = tree ornaments, small pretzels make good fences, Andes mints make good pavers, as do some jelly bellys, marshmallow snowmen…
okay, now I’m bummed I’m not making one this year. 
Happily enough, James Lileks provides some terrific suggestions!
We’re starting ours today!
Gumdrops make nice little bushes. Cut them in half and make bells for the wall of the house. Lollipops with icing stars or stripes are good trees, as are ice-cream cones upside-down.
Mailbox: stick a tootsie-roll onto a toothpick. Maybe put a red-hot on each end. Ice with a flag and your name.
Woodpile: stick pretzels with icing for snow. Pretzels also make good fences, but so will anything else.
Shredded wheat will make a thatched roof. Frosted schredded wheat=snowy thatched roof. Necco wafers, diamonds of icing with M&Ms, and a roof line of peppermint candies are also nice.
Lamps: peppermint sticks with gumdrops on top.
Have fun!
Whatever you do, do not try and go into too much detail. Last year, I thought covering the roof in those little red hot candies would look cool. However, it took so long that I finally got bored and gave up.
Also a much easier way to build it is to use molten sugar (caramel) It dries much faster than icing and is much more substantial while sill being edible.
Follow these steps for a truly memorable gingerbread house and the start of a wonderful holiday family tradition:
The last few years, I’ve built one with my two small boys. This year, as an added bonus, we made a scale model of our own real house. It was great fun.
First comment: I think you missed half the fun! Making the dough is great, and the smell of gingerbread is wonderful as it cooks. Plus you make cookies with the leftovers, and if you’re ambitious, you can make little figures to go on your house, like santa or reindeers or the kids faces to put in the windows or what not.
I don’t really know any rules other than have fun. We used these soft red round ring candies, cut them in two and made shingles form them. Green jaw breakers made nice bushes. Lollipops for trees. Red and yellow jellybeans for bricks on the chimney. Orange and brown M&Ms for a path to the front door. Also found some marshmellows shaped like christmas trees and snowmen, and used them for, well, christmas trees and snowmen. Made a wreath for the door with these treen worm candies.
Glue it all together with icing, Made with 3 eggs whites, 1 1/2 tsps of cream of tartar, and 4 cups of powdered sugar. throw it all together and beat it for 5 minutes. really helps if you have one of those bags you can squeeze it out the end of.
Have fun!
Thanks folks…there’s some great ideas here! (Though I don’t know what I’m going to do with theat great big bag of “Goodies” I bought after monica’s suggestion.
I also got some of those spearmint leaves…I’m going to try and stack them like trees.
If all goes well, I may make one from scratch next year.
After your house is completed, it’s nice to put two gingerbread children in the yard. Wonder aloud how they got there. Oooh and aaaah over them. Ask your kids if they think the children are getting fatter from eating the house. One day when they get home from school, meet them at the door with a mouth full of crumbs.