Filed under: Design, News, Lifestyle
Dentist John Learner will most likely tell you to keep your sweet tooth under control -- but his is running wild. Gingerbread, Pop Tarts, fruit roll-ups, icing, candy canes, hundred of pieces of gum: These are a few of his favorite things. It's not that he's eating them, though. He's using the sweets to build some of the most outlandish gingerbread houses you've ever seen.
"I like my gingerbread houses to be 3 feet tall and too big to wrap my arms around," Learner, who owns his practice in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, told real estate blog Curbed in a recent interview.
That's not an exaggeration. Some of his most prized gingerbread creations top out at 85 pounds and take two men to carry, according to Curbed. With roofs made of up to 60 Pop Tarts, walls of dried icing an inch thick, turrets made of rock candy and waffle cones and wraparound porches constructed from candy canes, some of Learner's most detailed projects have taken nine months to complete.It's no wonder why it takes so long: Each of his gingerbread houses are models of real buildings from around the world, built with breathtaking detail. His latest project, a candied replica of the 64,500-square-foot Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens estate in Akron, Ohio, has been three years in the making.
With Learner's unwavering dedication to his hobby, you'd think it was his job. And, truth be told, dentistry is "the bothersome, time-consuming job that keeps me from making gingerbread houses 24 hours a day," he told Curbed.
Just how impressive are Learner's sweet creations? Click through the gallery below to compare Learner's gingerbread houses to the actual estates they're modeled after.
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