Thursday, December 20, 2012

The VanDusen's annual gingerbread house contest

One of our newer but favorite family traditions is a gingerbread house building/decorating contest. Last year the kids worked in teams while Daddy was at work. He got to be the judge when he came home. This year I took a different approach. I didn't want my husband to miss out on the fun and frankly voting between your own kids is torture! So this year, each child got to make their own and we put it out to my facebook friends to vote. This turned out to be way more fun than any of us expected!

The Rules: They each got the same amount of ingredients to use. They all could build a stand from whatever household items they could find. I have to note that the stand idea was River's. They could not write anything on them that would give away their identity. Most important they had to be good sportsmen. I have very competitive kids!
The Prizes: 1st place wins a drive in movie, dinner and candy. 2nd place wins a trip to Flip N out with choice of one sibling, 3rd place wins a breakfast buffet, and 4th place gets their choice of redbox movie, drink and candy.

The Ingredients:

And the contest begins!!


Yes my husband is making one too, however he is not eligible and you will see why later. 

Many of our facebook voters asked about the stories behind the houses so I will start with Aly. 

Starting out, all she knew was that she wanted to have an m&m roof. This was her first time ever making one on her own. She had quite a bit of frustration in the beginning as her house fell down six times! But she's a fighter so she hung in there and kept going with a few tips from me. She ended up with what I think is a very good first house! 
Her finished house:


Now Graisan took a very different approach. She had sketched out her entire plan several hours before the contest. I told you they were competitive. She envisioned a 3 story house with a 3 car garage. That is pretty much what she executed. The only difference was in her sketch, she had a ladder leading upstairs but she had to revamp and make steps instead. 
Her finished house:


River thought he would get an edge by building his stand. He constructed a platform with wood scraps from our garage and some contact paper. When it came to building his house though, he had no plan and decided to wing it. He was thinking about the pentagon but wanted to go bigger. So he made the octagon, the first octagonial gingerbread house in human history (or so he thinks). And then he thought of death and it came to him, the first octagonial cemetery, death to candy everywhere. He then proceeded to throw copious amounts of candy into the open realms. The closed rooms as you can see are for deities and respected elders. The candy that paid extra got their tombs covered with pretzel sticks but alas were not worthy of a fully enclosed resting place. DEATH TO CANDY EVERYWHERE!!! Note to readers: He wrote this blurb himself.
His finished house:


Alex saw that the other kids were busy making their stands, and decided that was too much work for him. He went into the garage and the first thing he saw was our broken printer and decided yep that will work. He had previously googled some ideas and the first one tried didn't work out so well. He then made some structural changes and made it bigger. Once his house was finished, he concentrated on the yard. Originally he wanted the bears to be robbers, but he didn't think that fit with the Christmas spirit. So then he made two of them a couple standing around the fire. That couple invited the other bear that originally had a date but was stood up and now remains the "awkward" third wheel bear kicking his massive workout ball around. Note to readers: He also helped me write this blurb. 
His finished house:


Yes I am aware I have strange children. Its one of the things I love most about them!

Will might have been more excited to make his then any of the kids. He being a professional, was not eligible for the contest. He spent 3 1/2 hours constructing his log cabin ginger bread house. Its pretty amazing! He detailed the roof with graham cracker tile shingles and then covered it up with snow but I took some photos before the snow. 

 After snow



With the houses all done, I uploaded the photos onto facebook and the voting began! This was just as much fun for the kids as the making of their houses. They sat by the computer watching the votes roll in. Graisan created a score board and kept a tally of all the votes as they came in. I really cant thank everyone that voted enough!!! You truly made this our best tradition yet!

OK drum roll please..................................And the winner is:

1st place: house #3 Graisan
We had a tie for 2nd and 3rd place: House #1 & #2 Alex & Aly
4th place goes to house #4 River

Alex and Aly have worked out who gets which prize and they are both happy with their choices :)

Thank you again for being a part of our tradition!!!


3 comments:

  1. this was so much fun for us too...I love what u come up with...Good Job everyone....

    ReplyDelete

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