Gingerbread Contest 2008

I apologize for the lag in my posting these. Christmas was now nearly a week ago and I am just writing this blog now.

This year was the second annual MacDonald Family Gingerbread Contest. I don't want to call it a gingerbread house contest, since there was only 1 house built this year, so I'm leaving off any house reference.

The rules for this year's contest were simple.

1. You must use gingerbread in your entry.
2. All pieces of your entry must be edible. (Except the tray you build it on.)

*We decided after the contest to add a few more rules to next year's contest. They are still being considered, but some of them will probably make it into the "rule book" before next Christmas. Next year's rules could turn out to be something like this:

1. Everything (except the tray) in your entry must be edible. If you are willing to eat it, you can use it.
   
2. You must use gingerbread in your structure. It must be part of your main element.
   
3. You can work on it as long as you like, but all entries must be completed by dinner on the agreed upon date. Your entry must be able to stand throughout the meal without help to be in the judging.
4. When you say, "I'm done." You can't touch it anymore. It has to stand on its own.
   

The voting this year went like this. We each got a piece of paper. We lined up all the gingerbread structures on the dining room table and each was labeled A, B, C, D, or E. The categories we voted on were:

1. Overall favorite.
   
2. Creativity.
   
3. Craftsmanship. This is where it's good if your roof didn't split in half, your structure stood by itself, and you don't have excessive globs of icing.
   
4. Design elements. This was a new category this year. The design elements that we rated are a little more difficult to explain. I guess you could say that they are the parts of the entry that stand out to you and are worth noting. The way you would vote on them is Katie has 3 and mom has 8, so mom wins my first place vote.
   

• Take my Santa's Workshop for example. The design elements on my tray are my:
• trees
• curtains inside
• roof
• flower boxes
  

• The elements in Jason's Train Station would be his:
• floor
• train
• tracks
  

• In my mom's Barn, her design elements would include her:
• pig (that sadly I don't have a good picture of)
  
• farmer
  
• hay

• My dad's elements would be his:
• hockey players on the ice outside
• trees

• In Katie's Gingerpunzel's Tower, her elements would be her:
• tower
• people
• horse

The way we voted was we took our sheet of paper and for each category, we wrote down in order which entry we thought was the best for the category. For example, in the overall design category we may have WXYZ. We couldn't vote for our own. After we had voted, we assigned a point system to the votes. Each 1st place got 4 points, 2nd 3 points, etc. The person with the most points took first place.

I indeed was the winner. In a close second was my dad's little house. So, what do we do with these when we're finished? Well, we leave them out in the garden for various people to see and creatures to eat. Last year they caught multiple people checking them out from the alley.

Isn't that a fun way to get rid of them? Set them outside in the snow in a little village for the birds and neighbors to enjoy.

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