Decorating the gingerbread structures is done with copious amounts of royal icing and modeling chocolate. And candy. Lots of candy. I feel like Neo when he decides to rescue Morpheus, except I’m asking for “Candy, lots of candy!”
(If I was really dedicated, I’d crack into that gif and change all the guns to candy, but that’s a LOT of work.)
Now one may think, “Gee, that looks good enough to eat!”, and you would be correct. However, you should NOT eat it. It’s been sitting out for days, collecting dust and cat hair. The modeling chocolate has been kneaded and sculpted by hands. Sweaty, germy, human hands. The cinnamon stick columns are basically tree bark and only good to eat ground up into a fine powder (I don’t recommend the Cinnamon Challenge, though).
If you want to eat it, do what we do: make a veritable army of Gingerbread Mans (yes, I call them “Mans,” you can thank StrongBad for that) just for eating (and invading Gingerbread villages).
If you want to see all the pictures, here’s a handy-dandy slideshow at Photobucket. Unfortunately, since I didn’t take the time to rename all the files to put them in chronological order, it’s kind of a random look at the week+ we spent, rather than anything that makes sense.