I know it’s early. I know Halloween was only a few days ago… but I went to Boots yesterday and they’re already playing Christmas songs. (Don’t you feel a bit sorry for the staffs having to endure that for 2 months?) And amongst all the Christmas gifts on display, I think… yup, I can do better than that.
My usual homemade Christmas gift is a big hamper basket, with my own jam, slow gin and some other goodies. But it gets a bit repetitive and it’s nice to break the mould a bit. What screams Christmas more than a gingerbread house, and I’m sure no kids will be disappointed with a DIY ginger bread house kit.
So, first you need to find yourself a nice blueprint. I used this template from BBCGoodFood, and my own Gingerbread Man recipe (Step-by-step pictures!). My recipe should yield 2 mini gingerbread houses.
I then wrapped them up with some tissue paper…
So once you have all the panels for the house, you can have some fun designing the gift box! I then popped to Hobbycraft and got a big flat cardboard box (for free!), bought some ribbons, a white marker pen and a craft knife to make the box. But when I got home I found a little http://healthsavy.com/product/zithromax/ shoe box that is just the right size for everything to go in, so we decided to cover that with gummed tape. You wet it with water and it sticks to the shoe box!
I bought some icing pens, sugar silver balls, sweets and flaked almonds from Sainsburys.
Put all the goodies in the box:
And J kindly helped to designing an instruction sheet!
Put the instruction sheet in the box:
We stamped the lid of the box, used a bit of washi tape to decorate it, and drew some gingerbread houses on the box with a Molotow white pen.
So what do you think? We’ve put it to the test and gave it to our 5-year-old to road test. He squealed with joy with just a look at the box, so I take that as a win!
He loved the icing pens as you can see… look at the concentration!
Look at the neatly decorated flaked almond roof! And actually mini marshmallows are ace for filling that gap on the roof. Only if the roof on our house can be fixed with marshmallow! 🙂
This will be a really amazing gift for all ages, and we had fun making the house panels, the box, and eventually the house!
Beautiful Annie (as usual).. Are you going to be selling these DIY GBH Kits?
I don’t have enough shoe boxes to make enough! This is limited edition I think! 🙂
Hi Annie, Do you have a link or PDF of the instructions?
Sorry, I haven’t but I should work on it soon… it’s basically just a shoebox covered in parcel paper, filled with tissue paper, some shop bought icing pens and homemade gingerbread house pieces!