Mr. McGregor’s Garden was inspired by Theresa Layman’s gingerbread book and took us a total of 40 hours in 7 days.
These are all the pattern pieces. We started constructing and decorating before the last two roof pieces were baked, so I included the patterns instead of the baked gingerbread.
The roof was made from Golden Graham cereal.
We put red flow icing on the front and back of the potting shed, then piped the outside.
This was our progress after the second day of construction. We find it’s easier to decorate the pieces as they lay flat instead of vertical on the house. The royal icing dries pretty quick.
The little fences are made with pretzels. I made sections held together with brown royal icing, then let them sit to dry. I then added the sections together with royal icing.
This is the floor of the potting shed – rolled out brown chocolate fondant and used a stamp that looks like wood grain. The patio portion is broken up Necco wafers set in white royal icing.
Little clay pots were made from white fondant with brown and red gel color.
Two walls were put in place and then the inside was created. Next the other two walls were added and “glued” with royal icing. The little trowel is a broken Necco wafer and brown royal icing with #1 tip.
The “dirt” is crushed up chocolate cookie wafers. There is dark brown royal icing underneath all the cookie pieces to hold it in place.
The lettuce is white fondant with a little green gel color paste added. The fondant is smashed flat and then torn apart to give it the look of lettuce leaves.
The flowers and leaves are candy.
The shovel is a gray Necco wafer filed down to a rectangular shovel shape with brown royal icing handle (#3 tip).
The red tomatoes are little candies. The carrots are made from white fondant with orange color added, then molded to look like carrots (and carrot tops that growing in the ground).
The bunnies are made of white fondant with brown color gel and the eyes are dotted with edible marking pens.
The grass is made from shredded coconut, but this time the old fashioned watery green food coloring was added – not the gel color paste that’s used with royal icing. The gel color paste is not liquid enough to coat the shredded coconut.
Leslie created the cute little fertilizer bag – made from white fondant and a tiny bit of brown color get. The words were added with edible color markers.
You can see the bag on the side bench with some cookie crumbs (I mean “fertilizer”) spilling out.
Finished by Christmas Eve!
Let the un-decorating begin!
Looks like a tornado hit! Or was it a hurricane? Maybe just a California earthquake.