10 Over-The-Top Gingerbread Houses

There are a lot of things we love about Christmas, but gingerbread houses are one of our favorites! With so many creative, fun ideas out there, how can you not build your own gingerbread house this Christmas? Not only do they look amazing, but baking your own gingerbread walls will have the entire house smelling like Christmas cookies. Make it even more fun and host a gingerbread house decorating party, where your kids can design their own. With so many sweet candies to decorate with, your gingerbread houses will be colorful and ready-to-eat in no time.

Inspired by the story-telling brothers, this gigantic castle is filled with everything we love about gingerbread houses. With sugar-cube towers, a fondant guard, and glowing candy rocks, this castle is a candy lover's dream.

This log cabin uses pretzels to create a fence, a woodpile, and moose antlers above the front door. With a little car pulling up with a Christmas tree strapped to the top, this gingerbread log cabin looks like the perfect place to spend Christmas.

Disney's hotel in Orlando showed off this unbelievable gingerbread home in their lobby to add an aroma of gingerbread and holiday cheer throughout the resort. The entire house is edible. If you look closely, you can spot hidden Mickeys throughout the cookie masterpiece.

This gumdrop-filled gingerbread house looks gigantic and way too perfect to eat. There are icing icicles hanging from every inch of the three roofs and a candy cane doorway that adds even more Christmas décor to this house.

For the old woman who lived in a shoe and didn't know what to do, this shoe house solves all her problems. Inspired by the famous nursery rhyme, this gingerbread shoe has licorice laces, two candied roofs, and a secret entrance by the heel. If you look closely, you can see some of her gingerbread children in the front lawn.

This incredible pirate ship gingerbread house is filled with Christmas decorations, from the bow to the stern. There are tiny Christmas lights strung across the deck, and candies all throughout the boat that show us how these pirates decorate for the holiday season.

This cathedral, based on the one in Moscow, looks too incredible to eat. By using colorful candy to simulate the domes for the cathedral, the cookie version looks just like the real thing!

What goes better with a crunchy gingerbread cookie than a nice pot of tea? In this case, the tea pot is the gingerbread house! The flowers that line the spout resemble vines, while other flowers fill the windowsills and are planted in pots on the lawn.  

This gingerbread house, inspired by Disney's Up, perfectly captures the moment Carl's house lifts off the ground after he ties thousands of balloons to the roof. The colorful balloons are made out of jelly beans, and the pathway to the house is made out of M&M's, giving this gingerbread house the perfect touch of color. 

This house was Buzzfeed's grand prize gingerbread contest winner in 2010, standing over four feet tall and replicating a beautiful, snow-covered Victorian home. The house, which was surrounded by Christmas trees and lit up inside, was made from over 40 pounds of gingerbread and 30 pounds of royal icing.