Gingerbread Train

Every year, our family decorates a gingerbread house. We buy a simple, inexpensive kit from the grocery store, divide up the decorating equally, then put it together. We have tried to get a slightly different kit each year, but it is difficult to find many more different variations on the standard house. So this year we did something a little different and decided to go with a gingerbread train that we found with the houses. They are beginning to put some new, different kits out there, not simply houses and people, but also trains, carousals, sleighs, and trees. I think the carousal is pretty cute, almost like a Christmas merry-go-round, so maybe we'll try that one next year. 

As I have said in previous years, we never eat any of the gingerbread house, we simply decorate it and put it on display for Christmas, and well, sometimes it doesn't come down until nearly Easter time. It doesn't go bad since it is all sugar and preservatives, and that is another reason we do not eat it. My mother makes her own gingerbread cookies that we usually munch on while decorating. I have considered making the gingerbread dough for the kit myself, but it would be a lot of effort and ingredients wasted since we don't eat it anyway, plus we would need to purchase candies and make royal icing as well. 

The train seemed a bit more tedious to put together than a house, and initially had some stability issues as usual. The plastic tray provided to use as the base wasn't ideal, since it didn't really allow room for the wheels, so instead we just used a white piece of cardboard. The train stays up now, and looks quite nice on its platform.
I decorated the roof and the sides of the main train. I decorated the gingerbread man, which was not included in the kit but it was my idea to use one of my mother's gingerbread cookies. I wanted to prop him up a bit in the coal car, and thought it might be cool to add some coal. Chocolate chips were ideal, but that's a waste of good chocolate chips, so my father came up with the idea of using crumpled up balls of black construction paper. It's always funny how the kit contains candies of a variety of different colors, but always seems to be short on red and green candies. 

If you would like to check out the houses from the past two years, just follow these links:  2011 and 2012.