Modern Gingerbread House

Thanks to a gift from my Aunt Debbie & Uncle Jeff from Tennessee, we embarked on our first ever gingerbread house this past holiday. Most people probably build their gingerbread houses a bit before Christmas so they can consume it visually and as a sugar laden tasty treat through the holidays. We view it as a family craft project, of course with a little bit of customization we made it a Mid Century Modern Prefab Gingerbread house.

The kit comes in the box shown in the second photo. A quick organization of all necessary building components is shown in the third photo. A plastic tray houses the gingerbread pieces of the square planned house. The icing is premixed and ready to go along with the assorted candy decorations and is accompanied by a gingerbread christmas tree and candy wreath.

The house comes setup for a super pitched roof, which just wasn't going to work for us. For the butterfly roof profile, I made a quick modification to the front and back gingerbread pieces of the house. The resultant leftover gingerbread pieces allowed us to improvise an additional entry feature and chimney. Having built nice clean architectural models, I have to say the icing as glue proves a little sloppy, but the smaller the hole in the icing bag, the more control you end up developing as you go along.

Although I'm a minimalist at heart, this house is all about decoration, and we used every bit of the decorative candies in one way or another. We made sure to provide the quintessential center mounted doorknob, clerestory windows, and sculpture garden. The whole project was decorated on the fly, trying to proportion and use all the pieces was a good challenge and also a lot of fun. Perhaps next year we will try to do a custom one from scratch.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal Poll

Happy New Year, hello next decade. In three more years our house will be 60 years old, vintage for sure. Last we looked, we were well on our curb appeal road with new house color, concrete, screenwall, and walkways all completed. Still left to do is completing the mortar on the screen wall, as it will sit freestanding until spring. Additionally, the roofline needs addressed, ahem, redone & the main walkway up to the house will be removed and redone. Currently you can see the temporary patch job between the old curvilinear concrete walkway and the new inset porch step.

To start the new year off with a bit of evolution, welcome the first ever Cincinnati Modernation poll. This is my first poll 'gadget' in use so let's hope all works well. The poll is located in the upper right of the page. I decided to play with some Photoshop caricature concepts that illustrate our color schemes we hope to start working on as soon as the weather allows. With the temps in the teens today, I don't this will be anytime soon, plenty of time for debate. Trying to keep warm with single pane glass is a challenge in itself.

The first photo is the current situation, second is a dark gray bonanza that limits the palette, perhaps the concrete step should remain unpainted as it matches the concrete soffit nicely. Third up is a bit of throwback to the house's original maroon color, and was part of what we originally planned to do.

Finally a more 'Palm Springs' approach with a white roofline and white concrete walkway. The overcast sky doesn't help the white pop as it would on a clear day and blue sky background. I could see the Salterini orange slice chairs being a nice powder coated white to match as well, clean & clean!