"Ummm. . Can I Take PIctures Of Your. . House"

"Umm . . Can I take pictures of your your house?" Imagine what the owner of my model home was thinking when she herd that. She defiantly seemed shocked but probably not as shocked as she would have been if I was just standing outside of her window taking pictures. After explaining myself and how I was on the road to eternal glory she agreed to let me roam around her property and take pictures of her home. Taking pictures from every angle not to miss or forget a single thing (remember the model home is in Pa and I will soon be moving to OK)
For the next week I made daily visits to the home counting bricks for my graphing process. See most bricks are twice as long as they are wide, so when graphing the home every brick on the house was two squares across by one square high. This was no easy task as I kept going cross eyed during the process ! But nothing could stand in my way not even the dirty looks from neighbors wondering what on earth I was doing. I fist grafted the entire home including windows and doors from that point I decided to transfer and cut the shapes out of a foam core material. I choose foam core to make my model out of because it is the exact thickness that i want to make the cookies, and it will give me a realistic view of how my pieces will fit together. After I got the basic structure of the model up I began to add details such as the front porch chimneys and the very very very intricate woodwork. This all takes a much more time then you think so if you are planning a GB House stop reading this damn blog and get to work !
Realizing my foam core templates were a good choice for the model, the material will not be the best for cutting around with sharp knives. Time will be of the essence when frantically carving a warm slab of gingerbread , so a soft plastic called PVC seemed to be the ideal material. Yes if you were counting 3 Full templates of the house were made 1 Graph paper 2 foam core 3 PVC each time little flaws were noticed and corrected it was a very time consuming process but guess what HASTE MAKES WASTE! The above picture is of the unfinished foam core model home but you may notice that there are no dormers on the roof, they will be left out of the final project as well. Sometimes more does not look more impressive it looks messy and I feel the home will have a cleaner look without them.

If you ever have any questions of steps I have been vague on or not covered, I will always be more then happy to answer them.