A fun gingerbread house

Do you make gingerbread houses for Christmas? My family didn't usually, but I distinctly remember making one out of a cardboard box, royal icing, and candies in third grade. It was so much fun!

Well, here's a project that took me back to that third-grade classroom. I had to make myself stop adding to this gingerbread house. I won't tell you how late (or early) I ended up staying up when I was working on this. Let's just say that I totally lost track of time because I was having so much fun.

This is actually a box, so it can be a cute gift box as well as a functional Christmas decoration later. For the decorations, I used a Martha Stewart gingerbread clear stamp set I got last year after Christmas. They were perfect!

(And in case you're wondering, I was totally inspired by Lauren's new Home Made template!)

Here's the front:



The round peppermint candies were the first things I did to the house, and I was hooked. With a circle punch, it doesn't get any easier than this!

The stamp I used for the door was actually supposed to be a stand-alone gingerbread house image. I just thought it looked enough like a fancy door to use it. And besides, I wanted it to look like gingerbread.



Here's one side. Do you like the gumdrop bushes and the decorated tree?



Here's the other side, which is pretty much identical.



And here's the back. I was going to put another Christmas tree in one of the windows, but I thought it might look tacky if I didn't put an image in each of the windows. So it just looks like the gingerbread people have no worries about their electric bill. :)

I used my new Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page eyelet lace punch as the trimming on the roof. I thought it looked a little bit like icing. (I only used the border punch, not the corner punch.)

It's going to be really hard to part with this!