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The idea for Judy King to build a treehouse came a few weeks before Christmas, when she was out walking with her husband Ivan and they came upon an old tree stump.
King, who is from Unity, got to work over the next three weeks, building an elaborate structure with three long staircases, several doorways and windows, a cupola and a birdhouse.
It was an impressive effort. It helped that King is no ordinary builder: Her treehouse stood just 32 inches tall, with construction materials that included gingerbread, peppermints, Twizzlers, candy canes and white frosting.
It also wasn’t King’s first time making such a sweet edifice. In past years, the Waldo County woman has meticulously built several other gingerbread structures, including some with a distinctly midcoast look. They’ve included lighthouses, graveyards and a train station.
But while the gingerbread homes usually only make it through New Years, the tree house struck a chord with the Kings, who held onto it well into January because they wanted to savor its uniqueness.
Past gingerbread creations by Judy King include a train station and lighthouses. Credit: Ivan King
While King has other creative outlets, including gardening and finishing stained-glass windows, she has found that the holidays allow her to tap deeper into that side of her brain. She has produced many different gingerbread homes over the last couple decades.
“I used to be fanatical when I first started,” King said. “For many years, everything had to be edible.”
But if King has grown less dogmatic on the edibility, she has not skimped on the complexity. Her latest confectionery creation now rests on the old stump that had originally sparked the couple’s idea for a treehouse.
“To be able to create like that, to do something that big, you’d have to use some wooden structure,” King said.
The home has several grape vines twisted around the stairs. Replicas of deer and foxes stand underneath the treehouse, while the Kings’ eight-month-old Bernese mountain dog, Odin, is depicted on the top rail.
Eventually, the Kings were planning to let their grandkids tear the house apart, after they originally helped to decorate it. The general habit is for the family to eat any parts that are salvageable and send the rest to the compost.
It’s easy to make such gingerbread homes, King insists, so long as you know how to use the materials: dough that’s not too soft, frosting that’s fast-drying enough to hold parts together.
Her original inspiration came from a magazine article that featured a gingerbread castle with ice cream cones for towers, which King took it upon herself to imitate. Some of her more recent designs have been modeled after nearby sites, such as lighthouses in Rockport and Camden.
“You never know what’s going to materialize,” King said.