You may recognize hunky HGTV star Carter Oosterhouse from "Million Dollar Rooms" and other shows.
The designer has embarked on one of his coolest projects yet: life-size gingerbread houses!
These amazing creations can be found at all eleven Great Wolf Lodge restaurants nationwide through December. Visitors can dine inside the houses, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit Big Brothers Big Sisters.
"We're helping to create memories for families over the holidays," Carter told toofab's Lawrence Yee.
The biggest challenge? Conceptualizing the idea. "You're sorta limited to what you're capable of doing," Carter says. "Your brain goes off and you want to make everything like 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' but you have to step back a little bit and say, 'how much popcorn can we actually have?'
"200 pounds of popcorn to put into [the house] was somewhat unfathomable. But then you realize, maybe we CAN get that."
Along with the popcorn, each house required 1600 pounds of sugar, 15 gallons of corn syrup and countless man hours (work began in October). The walls are made of gingerbread, the roof shingles are popcorn, and the wallpaper are frosting dots.
Take a tour of a finished house with Carter below, and find out where you can visit them for yourself here.
The houses are totally compostable, which is one green tip Carter says everyone can follow: "Around the holidays we have so much food; more than we can ever imagine, so people should do that on their own!"
