Flashback: Gingerbread House Contest 2006

About this time two years ago, we participated in the Coyote Point Museum Gingerbread Design Challenge with a group of friends. It was a last minute entry and we all scrambled to come up with designs, purchase materials, and schedule some time when we could all actually meet up and work on it. Right away, it was agreed upon that ours was going to be a Castle At Christmas, and that everyone was to make a little something of their own choosing to go into the castle.

Right off the bat, some of our ideas proved too outrageous, such as the goldfish crackers swimming in a blue jello moat, Hogwarts, and even the little light inside the castle. Nonetheless, we somehow managed to come up with a PLAN and started gathering materials.

On the first day, the kids broke up into two groups and alternated between slathering on royal icing and applying the graham cracker sticks to the base, or, making sugar cones Christmas trees and butter cookie wreaths for the decoration. On the second and final day, they added in all the finishing, personal, touches -- chocolate dragons and horses, Post Halloween candy tree, wafer cookie cannons with Jaw Breaker cannon balls, Animal Cracker animals, Fruit Leather and Pocky Sticks flags, and the King Size Hershey Bar draw bridge.

Our castle came in Third Place, which was a pleasant surprise. While checking out the other entrants, I overheard lots of admiring comments about our submission. The one that sticks out the most though, was the comment of, "What a neat castle -- Is that what homeschoolers do all day?" We can only wish...