Gingerbread Cottage in the Snow

Start with the wreath. It's the one place on the page where a real green can sit, and once it's down everything else calibrates around it — the candy cane posts, the icing snowflakes, the gum-drop trim, the small wrapped presents tucked into the snow.

The cottage itself is a friendly, blocky little gingerbread, all warm browns and pillowy white frosting, with a single chimney puffing grey smoke into a midnight-blue sky speckled with snow. Simpler and tighter than the gingerbread-village piece in the same series — closer to a holiday card than a scene. Quick to finish, hard to mess up.