UP Inspired Gingerbread House for Big Brothers, Big Sisters Auction

[LawrenceKSRealEstate]

Thanks for all the encouragement and kind words!  I'm surprised at all the interest in our gingerbread houses, so many people have looked at them since I entered this one into the Craftster Challenge.

I'm trying to dig up some more photos and post them to our website of the Gingerbread UP House as well as my Gingerbread Empire State Building from 2007 and a few other Gingerbread Houses my family has worked on in past years.

We had no idea how much time goes into making one of these until my wife, Tanya donated one for the auction in 2005.  Since that year, each member of my family looks forward to making a Gingerbread House to donate and sometimes Tanya finds the time to make two.  Her houses generally sell for quite a bit more than the ones I build.  One year her two house raised over $4,000 and with the two houses our daughter and I donated, we helped raise $6,000 for Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Douglas County. At auction our houses have helped earn decent money for the charity, which is the goal, none of them have ever won first place.  So I appreciate everyone who voted for my UP House online!


Here I am working late into the night placing Red Hots, one by one, onto the base of the Empire State Building.
BTW - It's a requirement that everything besides the base be edible, I had a lot of questions about how I was able to get it to stand up... I built a tower of rice crispy treats as an internal support.... read more about the construction by clicking the photo...



Here are the four gingerbread houses built by my family for the 2007 auction.

[gamemom42]

I wish I could find better words than "WoW" or "phenomenal", because your work deserves something more.  I'm curious, what is your occupation?  I'm assuming you're an artist so I wondered what your medium usually is.

[LawrenceKSRealEstate]

At one point, I worked on interactive multimedia for retail stores, theme parks and restaurants... that kind of morphed into doing advertising on electronic billboards, the type you see in Times Square and Las Vegas... as well as event production... which many people would find exciting, however it was not very fulfilling to me.

Now, I support my wife's Real Estate business here in Lawrence, KS now by working on her website and helping her with advertising.  I also take residential photography for other real estate agents from time to time.  It's a lot less stressful and allows me to have good quality time with my family.  Time where I can consider doing projects like Gingerbread Houses, which would have been impossible with my previous schedule.

I'm flattered that so many people think that I do this (or something like this professionally) but this was only my 4th Gingerbread House.  Perhaps I should consider it as my next career, at worst it could help pay for all the cool tools I have on my wish list like a dough sheeter and professional oven... (yeah right!)

Also because we made the decision to do this every year, we have been perfecting our methods and purchasing tools each year... the second year we bought a stand mixer and some large baking sheets, next year we bough some tools to work with fondant, etc...

We are always picking up candy throughout the year as well...

I think the most important part is to have a good pattern.  Tanya does not like to make her patterns, she picks one out of a book... I enjoy creating my own patterns and usually start with a small paper model, then move on to a full size foam-core version as described in previous posts.  Finally, each year we try something new and there are three us so we all learn from each others mistakes and help each other when needed.

OH Yeah!  Use LOTS of PARCHMENT PAPER too.

[katara]

You are really VERY talented! Awesome job!!!  And you could REALLY consider it as your next career!

[ocean_static]

amazing work!  I am in awe of your patience and dedication to all the details of the house

[Elphelba]

That's amazing. I don't think you missed a tiny detail, great job .

[FoxyMama]

  Hooray!  I voted for you and you won - woohoo! Truly an awesome recreation of the UP house and I'm touched it was for such a great charity.

Martha~

[skatergirl1007]

I love the house and I also liked the movie. But this house is so much cooler.

[mittenz]

This is amazing i can't get over how amazing it really is!

[madgrin]

A backbone of rice krispy treats?  Ingenious!  Bet that one was fun to transport