If These Walls Could Talk

This year Downers Grove announced they were having a Gingerbread House contest and families and businesses were welcome to enter.  I was hoping the meager advertising would actually give us a chance.  Not necessarily at winning, but at not looking like complete losers.  Kathleen will notice that we stepped it up this year.  We are giving her a year off - she is getting married after all and may be a touch busy - from gingerbread house construction. But now that there is a competition I hope she starts sketching out some prize winning ideas.

All the stops were pulled out this year.  My competitive Martha Stewart began to emerge and it was all I could do to fight it (I spent more time than I should mention looking for ideas on the internet).  I am embarrassed to say that I even thought that I could have decorated my own house and the kids could have their own - wouldn't that be great parenting to have my house beat the kids house in the contest?  Seriously, I had to pull it together!  We trolled multiple candy aisles looking for creative decorations.  I am glad to see the Peeps folks have expanded to capitalize on Christmas as well as Easter.  Peeps trees, snowmen and "JOY" letters were all available for sale.  Erin, who is a marshmallow lover, wanted to try one.  She took one bite and headed toward the garbage can.

From november 2009

Erin, William and I all decorated the house but we were much more methodical this year.  Erin sensed my precision and competitive edge and was very careful about what she was doing.  "William you are ruining it" was heard many times (no, not by me!).  Poor William, he didn't have a lot of input on the house.  He did do a row of bubble gum at the peak of the roofline  (with the close supervision of his sister).

From november 2009

We mounted it all on an Aurelio's pizza box and made an entire front yard complete with snowballs, snow covered logs, stepping stones and a bridge.  We added the 'snow' on the roof at the end.  It was crystallized sugar held on by smearing honey all over the graham cracker roof.  It looked pretty awesome in my opinion.  The kids were completely convinced we were going to win.  They kept asking Jim over and over "If you were a judge, would you vote for ours?" "Do you think this is the best house ever Dad?".

From november 2009

Well we didn't win.  I have been waiting by the phone since Sunday night.  Maybe I mistyped our phone number on the application? Maybe it is because I stuffed the ballot box at one of the stores with ballots with Kath, Ann and Tina's names on them.  Cheaters never prosper you know.