My sister and I first started our gingerbread house tradition in the Christmas of 2003. The year before my friend Allison (of the curious cupcake) and I, had made my first ever homemade gingerbread houses from scratch. Not the little kits you buy and decorate, but the kind where you slave for hours in the kitchen and make an insane mess, all the while making the kitchen smell amazing. 
I don’t know where those pictures are… I’m pretty sure they predate the advent of my owning a digital camera (prehistoric 2002,) so they’re the kind that you printed out to see…vintage style…back in the day. Probably memorialized on some 4×6 in a box in my parents basement, no doubt. Documentation of the project aside, the memory was a hit, and the tradition stuck. (I mean think about it, I’m zegingerqueen…and it’s a whole holiday tradition revolving and celebrating the wonderful substance known as gingerbread…what’s not to love?) We’ve made several…although not every year (we fail.) In 2004, we got Harry Potter inspired, and made the Hagrid’s hut (see below.) And then the next year, a lighthouse, a few years later, a train, another year a bungalow, and last year…in a feat of architectural wonder, we actually managed to construct an A-frame: utter astonishment. We occasionally solicit others to join us, and they make some pretty amazing things too (you can walk down that memory lane here, if you so please.) But this year has been something of a process… baked one day, assembled another and then, FINALLY today, we managed to finish decorating our old world masterpiece.
And so it is with our greatest holiday pride and pleasure, that we present the seventh and finest addition to our personal gingerbread collaboration, gingerbread version 7.0: Ginger cottage, and Windmill, 2013.
These are the four installments between rustic cabin, 2003 (top right), and A-frame, 2012 (top left): left to right, Hargid’s Hut (’04), lighthouse (’05), Christmas train (’09), and bungalow (’10).
Until next year, success.
~ZeGingerbreadQueen