Gingerbread houses

After looking at other attempts at Gingerbread Houses I decided I wanted to give it a go. My initial idea was to make 16, yes I said 16 mini ones some being able to perch on mugs as gifts to give out at a Christnas meal on Saturday night. Well lets just say that didn't quite go to plan. I looked at so many different templates, sizes etc and different methods of making gingerbread dough. I ended up going with the melting method cutting out some mini templates of my own.
The dough seemed okay after chilling overnight then baking although I'd say was edging towards the hard side of gingerbread cookies. The real trouble started trying to actually get the houses to glue together without collapsing walls. I used Royal Icing and put it liberally on the sides to join the pieces and more or less ended up holding the houses to get them to set and hoping for the best. My attempts were very messy and I totally lost the will to make them perfect. My initial notion of hand piped tiles also feel down as my pre bought tube of icing proved difficult to use and in the end I stuck on small chocolates and sweets using the icing rather than have any elaborate detailing.

So in the end I ended up with 4 very rugged looking houses - that I have shameful photographed before. If I ever attempt a gingerbread house again I think I'll stick to one larger one - take more time over the building stage and enlist some help!
I look forward to looking at other attempts and am sure my little houses will be put to shame with some of he fantastic creations ! That being said I've given these out with warnings to dunk in a hot drink before hand as I think they run the risk of being a little hard.

I'm posting this to the Turquoise Lemons gingerbread link- up ! One of the many fab blogs I enjoy reading
http://www.turquoiselemons.com/2/post/2012/12/seasonal-gingerbread-house-link-up-christmas.html