Gingerbread House Contest: The Winner

The winner for the second time in three years was..... my mom.

We of course have a trophy. The one for this year is this little gingerbread house ornament. We "engrave" it with her name and the year.

Since she won this year, she gets to pick out the ornament for next year's winner.

So, the contest is over, what do you do with the houses?

We make them into a little village in the snow. The last few years it's been in the garden just off the alley, but with this year's snow, it's kind of hard to get back there. Instead we put them in the front yard. They're right along the driveway for the little boy who lives next door to see when he gets out of his car.

Gingerbread House Contest: Mom's House

This is her forming her pieces.


Fresh out of the oven!


I love this pair of pictures. We go from, this is a piece of cake and I've got this structure building thing down to the "Oh no! It's not sticking" face. Love it!


While she may have some issues with her buildings leaning, she rocks at the decorating part. Here's a few detail shots of some of the individual parts of her house.

The camp fire.


The snack the kids who live in this trailer left for Santa.


How about the license plate?


Ingredients:

• Gingerbread for the structure.
• Donut tires.
• Campfire is out of pretzels & fruit roll-ups.
• The fire ring is out of gingerbread.
• Gumball for a Beachball.
• License plate is out of a fruit roll-up and alphabet soup.
• Fruit roll-ups for the doors and windows.
• I think the sand is corn meal, but I'm not for sure.
• The grass is coconut dyed green (if I remember right.)
• Fishing pole is from one of those pirolette things, liquorish, and gummy fish.
• Picnic table from gingerbread.
• I'm not sure what the snack is from.
• Tree is from ice cream cone, sprinkles, and liquorish.
• There are also candy canes surrounding the door.

Gingerbread House Contest: My House

This is the house I built this year. It started out as a victorian farmhouse and quickly flopped from there to a contemporary model. Oh well.

This rolling pin is awesome. It weighs a lot more than my silicone one!


I like to make sure things will line up. It's the secret to my mostly square structures.


The gingerbread recipe we used this year wasn't quite as good as the one we've used in the past. Our past recipe was out of a library book, but unfortunately nobody could find it to check it out this year.

Ingredients:

• Structure from gingerbread.
• Roof is from Necco Wafers.
• Wreath is a green gummy thing with red M&Ms.
• Pathway is from gum made to look like coal.
• Path edging from gummy things with little sprinkles.
• Jumping fish from fish gummy.
• The grass sort of stuff is chow mein.
• Tree from icing covered ice cream cone.
• My windows are of gingerbread covered with frosting.

Gingerbread House Contest: Jason's House

Jason made an igloo this year for his entry into the contest.

He tried to bake a dome over a pyrex dish, but it wouldn't unstick itself. Instead, He took the pieces from that pyrex attempt and frosted them all together.




This little snowman started melting. Do you think it could be some sort of chemical reaction between the taffy and the cotton candy?


Ingredients:

• Gingerbread for structure.
• White rock candy for ice crystals on igloo.
• Peach flavored gummy penguins.
• Cotton Candy for snow.
• Taffy for the snowman.
• His face and the sidewalk are out of gum in the shape of coal.
• The door to his igloo is a necco wafer.

Gingerbread House Contest: Dad's House

You may or may not remember that my family has done a gingerbread house building contest the last few years. Well, we kept this tradition alive this year as well, even though we had to do it a little late due to work schedules and winter weather.

This year we stuck to the same rules and scoring system as last year. These rules and scores are outlined in my post from last year. Click here to see it.

I think each of our houses warrant an individual post, so I'm going to drag this out throughout the week. Check back on Friday to see the winner.

To kick off our week of Gingerbread Houses, here's the house my dad built.

My dad's house has a bit of a story to it. There's a young guy that lives down the street from my parents. He has a nice house and also owns a big empty lot next to it. Well, apparently my dad and Nick (the young guy) have been chatting about Nick putting in a garage. So, this year, my dad made his gingerbread house as a representation of what Nick's place would look like with a garage built into the hilly lot. Here it is:




I love his cars!


Ingredients:

• Cake for the topography.
• Gingerbread for all the structures.
• Wafer cookies for the driveway.
• Chocolate for the garage doors.