Gingerbread Houses 2021

Yipee! After last year’s Gingerbread House Competition Cancellation (say that in a hurry!) we were lucky enough to get together and have the family contest this year. We were originally scheduled for the 23rd, but a few members had a little stomach bug, so we thought it might be best to wait a day in hopes that it would be less contagious to the unafflicted. Creating our houses on the 24th isn’t my favorite thing to do, as it competes with our other traditions, but we had a great time and we had lots of frosting and candy everywhere. This year FinallyAnotherGirl was old enough to participate and she was so excited and just cute as could be. So, here’s the team line up for this year:

Team 1: SweetiePie, TheFirstChild and FinallyAnotherGirl. FinallyAnotherGirl LOVES the color lavender and unicorns, so they decided to do a unicorn house in her honor. Sadly, one of the roof pieces buckled halfway through making the house, so it sort of caved in. FinallyAnotherGirl seemed unfazed and she jumped over to another house to help for awhile. Then, awhile later, a few of her older cousins rescued her house and made a tee-pee sort of house.  It was a valiant effort and very cute considering it wasn’t completely finished.

Team 2: TheManoftheHouse and Me. (And a lot of help from FinallyAnotherGirl ;-D). We decided to commemorate the fact that we decorated the girls’ backyard playhouse with a Snoopy for Christmas this year. (I need to find a picture to post — it’s so cute and we had lots of help from my good quilty peep Junie and her husband.)  The nay-sayers didn’t think Snoopy would stay on top of the gingerbread house, but, even though his foot is leaning a little, he held firm.  But.  Do you see the Snoopy problem?  We forgot his ear!  No one even noticed until the day after Christmas — or, at least, if they did, they were too polite to say anything.

Team 3:  CuteNiece1, her newly minted husband, and TheSecondChild.  This funny team decided to celebrate the release of the new Matrix movie (and the fact that CuteNiece1 and her husband decided to watch the first Matrix movies on the 10-hour drive home for Christmas.)  I don’t even pretend to understand the symbolism in this house — all I know is that black box with all the white spots on it is the main computer.  The mess on the “tower” on the right is some sort of helicopter crash and sadly, I didn’t get a good picture of the guy climbing down the tower on the left — you can sort of see him on the right side of the tower in the bottom picture.  CuteNiece1 was very detailed with the black frosting and TheSecondChild was very proud of his Shredded Wheat/Fruit Loop cars.

Team 4:  {Le Sigh}.  As you know, we rarely let a year pass without some sort of naughty or political house.  This year, CuteNephew and CuteNiece2 just couldn’t let the Capitol Riot pass.  Considering we’re a split family politically, it always amazes me that ugly discussions don’t ensue.  But there was lots of fun and joking around about this house.  They did a great job.  CuteNiece2 spent a lot of time on that very clever rotunda and CuteNephew made a great American flag.  The MAGA hats and the little guy with the horns were also really fun — very clever!

Team 5:  MyDadLovesMeBestSister, CrazyBIL, and FinallyAGirl.  Last summer, MyDadLovesMeBestSister organized a trip to the American Girl Doll store in Chicago, so they decided to remember that fun trip.  It was so cute to watch them all working so hard on all the details of this little house.  CrazyBIL created a ladder out of a fruit roll-up to go from the second floor to the third floor.  They also made lots of cute furniture for their American Girl dolls.   Those pink balls on top of the house were originally destined for the unicorn house, but after the cave-in, the vultures swept in and found lots of fun candy!

After all the houses were done, we had our traditional paper ballot vote. We briefly discussed whether we should change our methods to have categories — you know, best design, most creative, etc. but we’re a cut-throat group and that idea was loudly voted down. Everyone can’t be a winner LOL! So, this year’s winners???
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Team 5 – The American Girl Doll House! FinallyAGirl wins for a second competition in a row!!!  Congratulations Team 5!!!!!

I love that my family are all so fun and that they love to show up and make a big mess!  So that’s it for this year — another really fun Gingerbread year.  I hope you’re relaxing this week and catching up from all the holiday rush.

XOXO,
Anna