This year, I’m leaving planet earth for my annual gingerbread house!

Have you ever heard of gingerbread architecture suspended from the ceiling??? I certainly had not, so I loved the challenge!

If you're making a gingerbread house you're going to need a beautiful and structural frosting to "glue" your pieces together and decorate your creation. Royal Frosting is the gold standard for gingerbread houses, as it is a stiff frosting that hardens over time as the liquid content evaporates.

Recently I’ve noticed a lot of very minimalistic organic-shaped mirrors appearing on the walls of trendy interiors…The cutting of the glass is actually one of the easier parts of this project, so if you try this at home, I’ll warn you that it is the frame that the bulk of my time spent on this project!

As I got into sewing I realized I wanted a mannequin to use for draping fabric and pinning designs, maybe even some haute couture!

I also wanted something that would look great in my room when I wasn’t using it and would also function as an accurate representation of my body, since most of my dream projects were clothes for yours truly.

Life has been a bit of a tumultuous journey the last few years, but recently after a job change and moving into a new home I feel I’ve finally come to some calmer seas - which is why for 2021’s gingerbread creation I’ve decided to create a gingerbread ship over on a calm sugar glass sea over a candy coral reef!

Traditionally, gingerbread is made by combining butter and brown sugar and then adding thick molasses. Then you slowly add the dry ingredients of flour, ginger, and all the other spices and kneed it into the dough.

But there are several factors one must consider to make “architectural gingerbread” and it is typically the molasses that gets swapped out for other ingredients…

“Somewhere in my memory…” is how the classic holiday song from the 1990 film Home Alone begins.

That song’s nostalgic sentiment is echoed through Peter Williams’s annual gingerbread houses. Peter fondly recalls trips to San Francisco as a kid where memories of gingerbread houses in hotel lobbies like The Westin St. Francis and The Fairmont linger in his memory. In 2010, Peter began what became a tradition of creating extravagant gingerbread buildings - usually with a traditional fairytale aesthetic...

Before this pandemic, I’d pose for artists a few evenings every week and stand still for hours while I was drawn, painted, or sculpted. You would think with that kind of patience I’d be able to handle sitting in my house for long periods of time, but you’d be mistaken…