Everything is edible on this fireplace!

Every year we go to my mom’s house and enjoy the family tradition of making gingerbread houses. This year my husband was able to join us (yeah!) so we wanted to make something fun and unique. Looking for some inspiration, we decided to go to our Christmas tree filled with ornaments. We were looking for something that wouldn’t be too complicated to make out of gingerbread, but still be fun and relevant to our lives at this time.

My husband spotted a fireplace with a snoopy hanging in the stalking…. and since we have a fireplace website (TheMasterFirePlace.com), that became our inspiration. Next, we had to figure out what kind of candy to bring to mom’s to make our fireplace come to life. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars and Hershey’s Cookies n’ Creme Bars seemed the logical place to go for the brick on the front. The cookies for Santa just had to be Choco Chippers Cereal. But the rest we kind of just made up as we went.

As mom was preparing the gingerbread dough, my hubby and I were getting the candy ready to apply. I cut out a few templates and husband started breaking apart the Hershey’s bars. Once all the gingerbread was made, we glued it together with mom’s special gingerbread icing recipe that gets hard in seconds. (Very helpful when making a big “house”.)

We decided a Crunch Bar would work great for the fireback. Candy canes held together with gummy wreaths was my husband’s ingenious idea for the fireplace grate. It wasn’t a great stretch to figure out that the logs could be made by simply stacking three Three Musketeer Bars! But the fire on the logs took a little thinking, as well as a little luck. We had some leftover candy from Halloween, so we decided to bring it along, just in case. Turns out, it was the perfect color for the fire! Several Sour Patch Gummy Pumpkins were squished and stretched to achieve the realistic looking fire flames.

As for the stalkings, we squished and pressed together Swedish Fish and cut them to the correct shape. Mom’s magic icing made a perfect white fluff for the tops of the stalkings. The coal (if you can see it) is made out of chopped up bits of chocolate dusted with cocoa. The hearth is broken up pieces of Nilla Wafers interspersed with Jelly Bellies. The plate for the cookies is a Oatmeal Pie and the glass of milk is several white gummy wreaths stuck together with icing. And of course the sign “For Santa” is made of  to Crunch Bars and icing.

My husband and I had a blast making this together, from coming up with the idea, to figuring out what to use for the different parts. Spending time with family and being creative at the same time…. that’s the best of both worlds!

Maybe this will serve as inspiration for your next Gingerbread House project. Happy Holidays!