It's officially the last of the Christmas content...boo!
You may have seen me building this in the vlog last weekend, but I wanted to share a full review and experience post of me building and decorating my first Gingerbread House (plus more!). I posted all my presents in the haul on Wednesday but I'll reshare the link to buy this Gingerbread House kit again here too.
When I opened this on Christmas morning, I was really impressed and shocked at the size of the kit. But it's also something to note, as this is defintely a kit for a family, rather than a single person. For me personally, it was a little overwhelming and to do all of it myself (properly), would have literally taken hourssss. It had a traditional gingerbread house, plus santa, two large trees, reindeer and a sleigh.
The kit came with everything needed to do the entire kit. It had the pre-baked gingerbread cookies themselves. Unusually, some of these were actually joint together and not broken apart. This made it a little tricky because when breaking them you had to be really careful and the separated lines weren't as clean as the other. It also came with pre-made icing which was really easy to use and also meant it could be stored once opening, without them drying out. Plus, the decorations, which I liked because they were all individually packed, but so different and in varying colours and shapes.
I ended up building the house first because after reading the instructions, it needed to set for at least 15 minutes prior to decorating, so I thought to be safe, I would leave it overnight. The instructions were really clear and easy to understand. I also found it quite useful to use the white cardboard bases as the base for each individual creation, however I would have preferred to also have a full size base. I've also seen with other kits that the bases have indentations for the gingerbread to sit inside and hold in place, which I think would have been really useful to further cement the base. The only difficulty I had was that the roof on one side was uneven so kept slipping down; instead of holding for a minute, I had to hold it for a good 5 and put on LOTS of icing.
I think the decorating aspect turned out really well and was so much fun. I thought I'd take inspiration from the box and copy the pattern to a certain degree. I simplified some parts and the snow finish, didn't seem to come out as it showed on the box so instead I did my own thing, which actually looks more like snow to me!
I did the whole thing myself, with no help, except for the trees. Jess (my sister) put them together and then was going to decorate them but got bored part way through and never got back round to doing it.
Overall, the whole building process was easy to follow, if not slightly stressful, but the decorating was a lot of fun. Everyone said you make gingerbread houses once and only once but I actually had a lot of fun so I think I would defintely do it again. I don't think it will be an annual yearly tradition but nevertheless, really good. For a kit this big, I think it would be a great family activity and sadly, bar Jess building the tree, it was all alone so a bit sad.
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