Gingerbread house

During the blizzard and subsequent snow days I decided to expend some pent up energy on the laborious task of building a gingerbread house.  It really is a task too which takes several days to accomplish.  Day one the dough is made, chilled, rolled it into house shaped components, and baked.  Then it is left lying around for a day or so to harden.  Day two is building day as the walls are all put into place.  The building part is quite a frustrating job as the icing doesn't stay the consistency you'd like it to stay.  Sometimes it will appear as though the walls are all holding together just to watch them collapse when another part is added to them.  These have to be left a while to make sure the icing is going to keep those sides together before putting the roof on.  This was a particularly frustrating task for me as I had made the side walls in two pieces (silly me) and the roof pieces did not want to stay put.  Decorating was mostly just fun.  There were sweets galore until I was on such a sugar high, I knew I was going to crash <KABOOM>, a mess on the kitchen floor.  And now it sits looking pretty on the piano mantel, where it is likely to remain until one of us thinks to throw it out, looking delicious but growing stale.  Here are some pics - see the tiny ducky pond and gingerbread snowman we placed out back?  I can see there would be scope for a lot of fun creating the garden had put the house on a bigger plate.