An Amazing Gingerbread House

Happy Saturday and welcome to another post sharing something interesting that I have photographed.  I hope you enjoy looking at this amazing creation and find some inspiration from the details of the design.

A local doctor does something incredible for the Concord Library each holiday season.  Dr. Andrea Resceniti, a surgeon at Emerson Hospital, makes an enormous gingerbread house that is displayed in the front room of the library.  She starts baking the gingerbread and assembling the house early in the fall.  I don't know how she finds the time to make and donate these houses but the entire community gets so much enjoyment from her work.  I didn't have a chance to take pictures of this creation until last week.  It still has a delicious aroma - it is a real gingerbread house with incredible details.

These four photos show the full view of each side of the house:

The house is very large and there are so many details.  I did some close up shots to give you a better look at the individual parts.

Santa and his sleigh...

Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer are around the corner on the roof.

One of several gumdrops trees.  Even the edge of the board holding the house is beautifully trimmed.

A train circles around one side of the house.

A candy cane cage.

These candies look like Lego blocks!

There are lots of candy characters and animals placed around the "lawn."

A bride and groom with babies and snowmen.

The duck pond (or fountain) - so cute!

It's hard to see in the photos but the doors and windows are glazed with clear red candy glass.

Two turrets are made of "stone"  with this pebble candy.

These candies really do look like little rocks.

There are so many patterns carefully made with candies.

Thanks to Dr. Andrea Resciniti for this incredible gift to the community.

I know that it is a long time until next Christmas but for something like this you might need to start now!  You could also make a smaller Valentine's Day "cottage" - I think that would be fun!

Reminder:  The Creative Memories 25% off nearly everything sale is ending tomorrow.  Please click HERE to go to the post with more details about the sale.  This is a great time to buy one or more of the Creative Memories exclusive Cricut cartridges for $41.25 instead of the regular price of $55.  Click HERE to go to the Cricut cartridge page on my CM personal website.  The sale ends on Sunday the 15th so don't miss the chance to save!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!


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Gingerbread House Ornaments (and a digital freebie)

The December days are flying by and I think I am trying to keep a few too many balls in the air (just like everyone else at this busy time of year!).  I have been working on getting the house decorated along with blog projects, design team projects, gift shopping and wrapping, making travel arrangements, doing a bit of baking and getting some Christmas cards ready to send.

If you are a long time reader of my blog you know that putting up the house decorations is a fairly complicated process.  We have many trees (one in almost every room) and some of them take a very long time to put up.  I do love the way the house looks and feels during the Christmas season and we leave all of the decorations up far longer than most people so my January is also quite festive!

I am a collector of many things and Christmas ornaments are one of my weaknesses.  We "need" so many trees to handle the collections and there are still some that don't get taken out every year.  Last year, I couldn't find one of my favorite sets of ornaments.  These gingerbread houses had been carefully packed but mysteriously left in the guest room closet and not taken to the attic with most of the other ornaments and decorations (we have an incredible walk-up attic that is very full!).

I was happy to find that the houses weren't permanently lost and I put them up in their "usual" spot in the desk area of my kitchen cabinets.  These are ceramic gingerbread with sparkly frosting and great details.

I bought these at our local museum store quite a few years ago.  The houses represent a variety of architectural styles through the years.  This is a cute "log cabin."

Here is another more formal town house...

...and a larger traditional style house.

There is even a church to finish out the little village.

I will be adding some greens and twinkle lights to the shelf  area where they are hanging.  We haven't picked out our live tree yet and I usually take the excess greens from the lower branches for a few spots around the house.  I love the pine smell they give to the rooms.

I decided to try a quick project with my photos of the ornaments.  I used my Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 software to turn one of the gingerbread houses into a PNG file that I can use in my digital projects.  I tried using the "magic wand" but I wasn't happy with the edges of the image so I went ahead and did a long custom cut process to drop out all of the background.

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone - I had to play with the image just a bit.  I made four copies and rotated them at 90 degree intervals and then grouped them together to form this pattern.

I could see a star or pinwheel pattern in the image so I cropped away some of the house portions and created this image as well.

I thought I'd share my gingerbread ornament with any of you who enjoy using both digital and traditional paper products for your projects.  If you click on the image above it will take you to the download link for the full size image.  It is a very large image so the download will take longer than usual.  I hope you can use it and, as always, I'd love to see what you do with the image if you download it.

I had a surprise when I went to upload my photos to Blogger to make this post.  I found out that I had exceeded the free storage for my account and I would need to pay to have additional storage for my photos.  I have been blogging for nearly three years and, even though I reduce the size of my photos for the computer screen I finally "topped out."  Fortunately, the cost for additional storage is very reasonable so I will be able to keep posting lots and lots of photos for a long time to come.  I will just have to pay to renew this storage each year.

One other note - I can see that my hit counter is getting closer and closer to the one million milestone so I am planning some special things for when it rolls over.  I have to go get one with more decimal places since I only have six digits - I never imagined that this would be a problem!  I think I will plan to have the Celebration in January even if the millionth hit happens before then so it won't interfere with the holidays.  It's going to be fun (and yes, there will be gifts!).

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Gingerbread and Snowflakes

My brother is a talented artist.  He and his partner make Tiffany reproduction lamps and other stained glass art.  They have a lovely shop in St. Paul.  If you have been reading my blog for a while, you may remember the post I made a while ago about the store hours sign I did in vinyl for Century Studios (here is a LINK to that post).

Bill is also a collector of all things related to the Wizard of Oz and has a blog called The Oz Enthusiast where he showcases some of his collection and research.  I just had to share this amazing Gingerbread Emerald City Palace that he made - you can see a bit more about it on his blog (please leave a comment if you can).

I did make some files with more snowflakes in circles - these are from Winter Woodland - but I did not have enough time today to do test cuts (or make the video).  You can see from the preview that they will be very pretty!

Here are a few from When It's Cold Outside - I won't do all of the variations but they are simple to do so you can make yours with whatever snowflakes you like.  I hope to post the video tomorrow but it will depend on how the drive home goes.

There was a fair bit of snow last night but fortunately today it turned to rain so I was able to get to our son's concert despite a bit of fogginess tonight.  It was wonderful - lots of talented students sharing their compositions.  I only got to see him for a few minutes before he had to rush off to another event but next week I'll come back to bring him home for the long winter break.  So tomorrow I'll be on the road again!