Gingerbread Dog House: (three bedrooms, no baths)

It's that time again♡---friends and neighbors are smiling and commenting on the smell of cinnamon and ginger in the halls. We're well stocked on molasses and brown sugar, and we are ready to build.

(above: let it snow)

Every year right around this time we make a Gingerbread house for the New York Botanic Garden. Not surprisingly, all of my houses revolve around things my son is interested in that year. One year it was a train station, then a rocket, a dinosaur, the three pigs, and the Nutcracker Suite (which admittedly was a bit of a stretch, since he'd never heard of the Nutcracker Suite, but the Nutcracker-soldier dueling with the evil mouse-king seemed to seal the deal).

Step by step: how to build a super-delicious dog.

We promised him that he could have a dog when he's nine, and at seven, he seems to be spending a lot of time thinking about and preparing to be part of that A-Boy-and-his-Dog thing, so this year we've made a dog house.
Not a house for a dog (see, it's a joke), it's a house shaped like a dog. Like a road-side stand you might find on route 66, or like a fantasy house in the imagination of a child. It has parts to climb, and parts to swing on, and lots of important amenities like a rooftop garden and a satellite dish so we can get ALL of the football games.

And kids. Tiny sugar & spice kids to live in it and enjoy it was essential, (I was told by my inside source), to the completion of the project.

(above: homework)

The Gingerbread Adventures exhibit can be found in the Everett Children's Adventure Garden and is part of the New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show which runs from Saturday, November 19th through Monday, January 16th.