I know I’m not the only one whose attention was captured by the adorable Modernist gingerbread house from Red Envelope. Wes has been preaching to me the doctrine of clean lines and simple style, and where better than in a gingerbread house? Why struggle with turrets and froufrou Old World styles, a la Martha Stewart, when it would be so much easier — and cooler — to do a Neutra or a Frey or an Eames? I thought of the beautiful desert modern houses of Palm Springs, where I spent my first anniversary with Wes. Some might not even require frosting — Orbit Inn was too overpriced for a stay, but its dusty green-brown palette with orange accents would translate easily into brown cookie and orange frosting. Or maybe covered in frosting for a stark white exterior, like the hotel where we stayed.

But I wanted my gingerbread house to be a home, not a hotel. And not a McMansion, either. Eventually I settled on Albert Frey’s first home in Palm Springs, a nice little bungalow that I could picture myself casting in cookie and frosting … and candy glass for the windows. We Southern Californians like that indoor-outdoor flow. A couple of bikini-clad gingerbread people, sunning themselves on those loungers (maybe I could use those big, square artisanal marshmallows), would complete the scene.

Photo of a photocopied page from Palm Springs Weekend

Looks easy enough, right? Still, I figured I should plan it out.

As I drew the templates, resizing to fit realities like the size of my baking sheet, I felt myself relating to my future gingerbread family. Wes and I have been house hunting, and while the national real estate market may be tanking, in Los Angeles you’d be lucky to get 1,000 square feet in a decent neighborhood to call your own for half a million dollars. And my poor gingerbread people would be even worse off. They wouldn’t even have enough room to turn around in their house… if they could get in, because I wasn’t about to build a working door.

I had thought Modernist Gingerbread House would be a breeze, with a flat roof and 90-degree angles. Sure, the smoke alarm went off as I tried to make small batches of candy glass, but that happens all the time. But the frosting turned out to be a little gloppier than I had expected, and those clean lines weren’t as clean as they’d been in my imagination (next time I should use fondant). I accidentally baked one panel backwards, so it’s a mirror image of the original, and there wasn’t any room for the marshmallow loungers. So I put Gingerbread Girl in the pool, where Wes commented she looked like she was dead. If I had thought ahead, I could’ve made her Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, but I would’ve had to paint the back.

But I love my little people, just the way they are. I want to take them with me everywhere! Especially since their living quarters are so cramped.