Okay, so this isn't quite science, we didn't count, pay attention to measurements or anything like that. This was strictly a mother-daughter bonding experience. I got this idea from No-Bake Gingerbread Houses for Kids by Lisa Turner Anderson.
We started off with a wooden cutting board covered in foil. We made pink icing with white icing and red food dye. 
We chose a spot in the "yard" to build the house. 
We used chewy chocolate chip cookies. This was a deviation from the recipe, it called for molasses cookies. I'm not sure what those are... but they look thinner and would have been a better bet I think, and you'll see why later... 
Another deviation... the recipe called for "2 large flat-bottom waffle bowls" which I assumed were those things that are used to hold ice cream. I searched the ice cream cone shelf at the store and found nothing of the sort. I wasn't sure what I was going to do until I came across these tiny graham cracker pie crusts, once out of their aluminum covering, they were very fragile. This one was our second one, the first hardly made it out of the box before it broke. 
So far so good... but this mini pie crust will end up breaking too. 
Since the mini pie crusts did not work out, we decided to use use a non-food item out of necessity. We whipped up a batch of green icing, which we would be needing anyway. We covered the foil cup that the pie crust had come in with green icing. 
Mom cut spearmint leaf candy into thin layers. Not thin enough though... the leaves constantly fell off during the process. The recipe also indicated that these leaves would be sticky enough to not need an additional adhesive. This was also not true, so we used icing which made things slightly better. 
On to the second floor of the house... 
And the second layer of leaves!
A jelly bean walk way...
a chocolate granola bar door (with a jelly bean door knob)...
flower-shaped sprinkers for the garden.... 
the pond was Mom's idea, it's made from blue Jell-o...
Finished!
And so much fun!!!
