Nisser & gluten-free salt dough Gingerbread House

If you look at my posts/photos from this time last year, or if you have been following along since then, you know that I am half Danish, and we like to incorporate Scandinavian traditions. A big part of Scandinavian Christmas traditions are handmade/homemade decorations. So, when we started making gluten-free salt dough a while back, I thought it would be perfect for Christmas ornaments.

These first 2 pictures are of Nisser that we made. We used a template that Andy drew. I cut the dough around the template with a butter knife. After they were baked and cool, Andy and the girls painted them and I hung them with ribbon on our tree.

Then I thought, rather than make gluten-free gingerbread for a gingerbread house, why not use the salt dough? So, last week I made some dough and added a tablespoon of cinnamon to give it a gingerbread color. Using another template that I made, we cut the dough for the house and baked it. Today we hot glued the framework of the house together, on a scrap piece of board.

I didn't want to make the pediment with the dough, so I made a template by folding paper, until it fit. Then Zoe traced and cut the pieces out of cardboard, and we hot glued them in place.

After the structure was complete, we made more dough. We used the lid of a spice jar as a cookie cutter for circles, which we will paint to look like candy for decorating our gingerbread house. We also used a little bear shaped cookie cutter and a little heart cookie cutter. Tomorrow we're going to paint them and attach them to the house like candy.

"Why not use candy?" you may ask. Well, as you know, we don't tolerate refined sugar very well, and I'd rather not have it around anyway, so we are going unconventional here =] I'm also thinking of adding ribbon and fabric —so this is not a typical gingerbread house. But we are having tons of fun with it, and that's the whole point anyway, right? Also, I want to put a light inside and reuse it every year for Christmas.

Part two of our project —still to come =]

Click for the gluten-free salt dough recipe we use.