When Gingerbread Houses go green, the modern Gingerbread House

You knew it would happen, Gingerbread Houses step outside of the cute cottage world and go modern. Sure, we still build the fun little houses with the family. Looking like the many children stories that we grew up with.

Some rather creative folks make their Gingerbread Houses look like buildings and houses we know. While others give us a glimse of things yet to come.

We found a small collection of houses that while they are still Gingerbread in color, they are ‘green’ in what they represent. Houses with windmills, houses with recycled water of little blue gumdrops and houses that in the real world are made of bamboo.

Making your own White House Gingerbread House

This year’s house created by chef Bill Yosses is weighing in at 350 lbs. It is actually made from Gingerbread but is then covered with White Chocolate.

From the side, you can see the garden.

And, just for good reference, here is last year’s house. Bo the dog gets to be in with both year’s houses.

Now, the part where you make your own. The first step is to get your hands on Yosses’ recipe. Which, lucky for us this year, he has shared!

The basic ingredients are what you would expect:

8 oz (2 sticks) butter, soft
2 cups dark brown sugar
2 eggs, large
1 cup molasses
7 cups All Purpose flour
¼ tsp ginger ground
¼ tsp cinnamon, ground
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Lemon zest from 1 lemon
Orange zest from 1 orange

So we don’t get in trouble here for copying something provided by the White House, your next step will be to jump over to the Obama Food blog to get the order or mixing, etc…

If you have ever wondered about the history and facts of the White House yearly Gingerbread House, the same site has it all, starting with the Nixons.

Update: we were just told about a version of Bill Yosse’s Gingerbread cookies made with Splenda is also available.

Gingerbread Men Dog Treats, fun for the whole family

Anytime you have a Gingerbread Man cookie in hand, you will find your family pet is not far away. They can tell they are missing out on something since everyone smiles when eating their cookies, and the Gingerbread aroma is hard to miss.

Our dogs will now be able to join in on the fun with Pawsitively Gourmet Classic Gingerbread Man Cookies for Dogs. Available a convenient 32 ounce package. The treats look just like the ‘human’ version of a Gingerbread Man cookie, but made for your dog as a healthy treat. Well, healthier than sharing your frosted cookie. Looking at them though, it’s hard to tell the difference between your cookie and your dog’s version.

Snap together Gingerbread Cookie Toys for Kids

Not all Gingerbread Cookies are editable. We are not talking about poorly cooked cookies, but rather Gingerbread Men and Women decorations, and now… kids toys!

We found these fun little toy set (small, so not for kids under 3) of all kinds of Gingerbread Men and Gingerbread Women. “Learning Resources – Smart Snacks Gingerbread Sort & Snap” Each painted up colorfully and unique to each other. An added bit of fun for kids is that the hands snap together so they can make Gingerbread ‘people’ chains. Since each figurine is different from the next, it could be fun to make a chain of grouping two next to each other with the same color hair then the same color pants, etc… Hmmm… maybe we need to get a set for the adults here to play with.

Making Gingerbread Men Cookies on the iPad and iPhone

No, don’t use your iPad as a serving tray or a plate for your cookies in the oven. This is more about having fun making ‘digital’ cookies on your iPad or iPhone. The application available through the iTunes app store is ‘Cookie Doodle‘.

With the app, you choose your dough, roll it out, choose the cookie cutter, bake and then decorate to make them ‘your’ creations. Your cookies can be saved as an image or sent out with an email right from your iPad and iPhone. One cookie doesn’t say what you want to say? You can create a plate of cookies to share, giving you more oportunities to show your Gingerbread decorating creative side. Grab your copy of Cookie Doodle for a bit of family fun too, there is no charge to make endless number of cookies after the initial 99 cents for the app.

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Interactive Gingerbread Man Online Coloring Page for the Kids

Don’t have your box of color crayons handy? Not a problem. We found this Web page that has a great bit of fun for the kids. No need to worry about marking up the table cloth when a pen goes wide off the paper. This interactive color site has a fun Gingerbread Man that kids of all ages (yes, that means us too!) can color between the lines using their computer. There is a wide variety of color choices so no two finished pieces of art will look the same.

If you want to keep the creation, a print feature is provided for too. The default printing looks like a full size page of paper so the Gingerbread Man will be enjoyed by many.

There are many other holiday coloring outlines available, so there is something for just about everyone.

Christmas Online Coloring Pages

Boy and Christmas Tree
Boy with Christmas Tree on Sled
Christmas Bells
Christmas Candles
Christmas Carolers
Christmas Poinsettia
Christmas Puppy
Christmas Stocking Coloring Template Outline
Printable Christmas Tree Template Outline
Christmas Tree and Chair
Fireplace with Stockings
Gingerbread Cookie
Gingerbread Man
Letters from Santa
Old Fashioned Santa with Toys
Puppy in Stocking
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa and Attack Dog Color Game
Santa Claus

Santa Going Down the Chimney
Santa’s Hat Template Outline
Santa’s Reindeer in Snow
Teddy Bear in Gift Box
Trimming the Tree Decorations

Gingerbread Men, Women and House Stand Ups and Wall Stickers

Sometimes you will find Gingerbread Men and Houses where you weren’t looking for them. Normally, Gingerbread fun items are in with the Holiday area of stores that are general retailers or specialty stores. Who would have thought… ToysRUs?

The fun finds we had are Gingerbread Men, Women and House Stand Ups. These are not little doll size, the Gingerbread People stand 44 inches tall and the House is 60 inches tall. These are available directly from ToysRUs’s Web site. I have included links to the pages I found, not sure how long they will be good or if these are regular year round offerings.

Gingerbread Man Standees – Set of 2: The set of 2 freestanding Gingerbread Man stand at 44 inches high x 33 inches wide and are made of cardboard.

Gingerbread Man Standee (Not sure if this is the house or just a even ‘bigger’ Gingerbread Man): The Gingerbread Man stands at 60 inches tall and made cardboard. Assembly is required.


Gingerbread Wall Graphic: Decorate your walls with our Gingerbread Wall Graphic. Just peel and stick the removable decals to your wall to add some fun to your holiday party.

The Gingerbread Man you can’t eat

If you have been looking around the Internet for the last couple months for Gingerbread, you may have found a bunch of links about a new ‘android’ called “Gingerbread”. Well, we thought we should clear up what that is so you can move onto the editable type of Gingerbread Men.

Gingerbread is a new version of an operating system from Google. It is found on many cell phones these day across all of the different service providers. Think of Android like you do of Windows on your computer. The difference is that Google encourages companies to put their own ‘face’ on top of the Android operating system… that way it’s their power in the background but looks like the way Samsung or HTC wants their phone to work. There is a lot of rumors talking about a new version of Android ‘Gingerbread’ coming out soon for the little notebooks called netbooks or iPad like ‘tablet’ computers.

The big announcement yesterday was for the first cell phone to come up with the new version of the Google Android OS. It doesn’t have any ‘face’ on it so the phone works and acts just the way Google wants it to. If you want to read more about it, TrustedReviews did a post about what makes the ‘Gingerbread’ version different.

You may recognize the ‘Android’ logo:

Here is the old green ‘Android’ standing next to an editable house!

And since this version of Android is called ‘Gingerbread’, the icon has changed over at BestBuy to have a little fun of joining the two together: