$50 of candy, a cardboard box, caulk, hot glue and brown/white spray paint can get you what you can’t seem to find in April.

Our Christmas shoot required a large gingerbread house for the set. Only tiny ones were to be found on Amazon out of season. I thought it would get lost in the large set space and took it upon myself to make some big fancy gingerbread houses.

I first spray painted the boxes to smooth out the markings on each box. I lightly sprayed the roof white to look like snow. Then using hot glue and caulk instead of real icing, I started to place the candy starting on the roof. The caulk took awhile to dry but gave me the effect of real icing that I wanted. I cut the end of the caulk tubes 2 different width openings 1) to get a thicker stripe of caulk and then a 2) smaller one to add the details.

The peppermints reacted with the caulk a bit and started to melt and drip some red color down the sides but that didn’t last long and was easily wiped away with a paper towel. More candy covered any blemishes especially since Gingerbread homes aren’t meant to be perfect. Is anything really?

Finally after a few hours and drying time the houses were done. I waited 2 days to really move them around to make sure the thick caulk was sturdy and dry and that nothing was going to fall off. I only lost 1 rooftop gumball in the transport.

Finally, our Christmas in April was ready to go. Easy peasy to make and less expensive than buying them out of season. You can make anything!