Planning on building your own Gingerbread House this year? Awesome! Building a Gingerbread House from scratch is a holiday tradition that kids of all ages can enjoy, and it can even be a ton of fun for the adults too!

If  you're looking for some great ways to make your Gingerbread House Stand out, but you're no Martha Stewart when it comes to crafts, you're in luck! We've come up with some great tips, tricks, and ideas for building an amazing gingerbread house, as well as some nifty ways to make it stand out from the crowd.

Whether you're entering one of this year's Gingerbread House Competitions, or you're simply building a Gingerbread House at home for fun, these tips & tricks are sure to spice up the decor of your cookie home:

Get Organized
Before you even begin decorating your Gingerbread House, make sure you've got all of your sweet treats and decorations organized! A muffin tin is a great place to store all sorts of different candy, making it easily accessible while you're decorating.

Make Sure The House Stands Tall
One of the most difficult tasks in building a Gingerbread House is getting the walls to stand up! To ensure your walls stay stuck together, and don't collapse, skip the traditional frosting "glue", and use caramel syrup! Caramel Syrup is stickier, and will become harder when it dries, ensuring that your structure will be safe to decorate

Raise the Roof with Sweet Treats
Before you decorate your Gingerbread House's roof with gumdrops and candy buttons, you should lay down your rows of "shingles". For a more "real" looking roof, you can use Frosted Wheaties Cereal - they come complete with snow! For a more whimsical look, you can use Neco Wafters for shingles, or Marshmellow Twists lined up in row.

Add Some Fun with a Skiing Snowman
No Gingerbread House would be complete without a Snowman! To build your little skier, line up two miniature candy canes, and attach them to the bottom of a large marshmellow. Then, place a medium sized marshmellow on top of the large one, and a small one on top of the medium one. If you're not going to eat the Marshmellow Snowman and he's just for decor, you can draw a fun face on once he's dry. If you do intend on eating all parts of your Gingerbread House, use tiny candies to decorate him.

Add a Beautiful Forest Filled With Trees
Want to add some beautiful trees to your Winter Wonderland? No problem! All you need is some waffle cones, frosting to use as glue, and your favorite green colored candies, and you've got yourself a forest! If you're really good with icing designs, you can use green frosting to create little pipettes that look like pine needles, and if you want to add some extra fun, add in some colorful candies to look like ornaments!

Make Gingerbread House Building a Little More Kid-Friendly
If your little one isn't quite ready to decorate a free-standing Gingerbread House, but old enough to still want in on the fun, you can make sure they can still participate by giving them a little extra help. Instead of buidling a traditional Gingerbread house, you can take a small paper milk carton that's been emptied and rinsed out, and using icing as "glue", attach graham crackers to all the sides. Ones dried, your little one can decorate their very own Miniature Gingerbread House however they please, and you won't have to worry about the walls falling!

If All Else Fails, Buy a Kit
So you've tried building Gingerbread Houses in the past, and maybe they didn't come out as nice as you had hoped. That's ok! You can always buy a Gingerbread House Kit that includes the basics - the gingerbread, some icing, and some candy to decorate with, and build it up from there! Just because you buy the kit, doesn't mean you can't get fancy with it!

Remember to Have Fun
Although your Gingerbread House might not turn out Pinterest Perfect, remember - the most important thing when constructing your Gingerbread House is that you're supposed to be having fun. Building a Gingerbread House together is a memory that will be treasured by your whole family, so if you get frustrated during the construction process, take a step back, take a deep breath, maybe enjoy some Christmas Candy, and then go back to building!

Did you build an amazing Gingerbread House this Holiday Season?
Email it to us, and we'll add it to our Holiday Season Photo Gallery!

Photo by Deror Avi, via Wikicommons.