The House:

How to make a gingerbread house? ...Well, first of all, it doesn’t have to be gingerbread! If you don’t want to bake gingerbread slabs to fit together, consider:

• Pretzel "logs" to build a cabin
• Graham cracker "plywood"
• Other store-bought cookies to build with
• Gluing all the gewgaws to a cardboard structure

Also, don’t forget the barn, silo, stable, and doghouse!

Other architectural details:

• A chimney can have "smoke" made of polyester fluff.
• Windows can be cut out and paned with thin, light-colored fruit leather or specially-made sheets of thin candy "glass"... And a candle can be put inside the house!
• Look around for fun candies to add as Victorian trim... any that can be use whole (cinnamon red hots, small gumdrops, silver BBs, flat Chiclets gum) or cut into the desired shapes/sizes (larger gumdrops, candy canes - the straight parts for corner trim and the curved ends along the ridgeline, licorice sticks in various colors).
• Lapped flat cookies and the like (e.g., round Necco Wafers candy, Rice Chex?) make good roof shingles.
• A log cabin might be trimmed with only "natural"-looking stuff... crackers or un-iced cookies as a roof, nut/raisin outer chimney "rocks", cinnamon stick "shutters"... and, of course, white icing icicles along the eaves.

The Scenery:

Fairly realistic gingerbread trees can be made several ways... Flat (with an iced-on stand-up triangle behind). In 2 flat pieces with slots (one on top, one on the bottom) that can be fitted together. Or in 3 pieces, one "whole" flat tree shape and two cut in half that are iced down the middle of the whole one on either side. ...Then use more white icing to daub the tops/edges of the "greenery" with "snow".

Other gingerbread bits can also be made, such as gates and archways, rolled logs for fences (or use little rolled cookies), dog houses, or critters in the yard (or manger).

Popcorn trees can also be fun: Use a popcorn ball syrup as "glue" and simply form cone shapes in the sizes desired (these can be eaten later); or glue popcorn to little styrofoam cones. Ice on candy decorations if you like.

Or consider shaped trees made from a basic Rice Krispie-Marshmallow treat recipe.

Or easier yet... use ice cream sugar cones for trees. (If you want to get more "realistic", cover them in green icing and press M&Ms into it for "foliage".)

A pond might be made from fruit leather. (A cousin of mine even made a pond this way: The base of her scene was a thick layer of Rice Krispies cookie, out of which she carefully gouged a shallow "pond"... into which she poured blue Jell-O!)

  
Or... get hypercreative!?

What about a gingerbread:

• Taj Mahal
• Igloo
• Grass hut with palm trees
• Carousel
• Kitchen
• Great Wall of China
• Bowling alley
• Hobbit house
• Gypsy caravan