Gingerbread House Competition

            Every Sunday we go to my parents house for dinner and this Sunday, with it being all Christmas and all, we had a Gingerbread house competition! we have started this new tradition and for the past couple years my family has been expressing our Christmas Spirit by doing this fun activity.  This year we had three teams: team 1 - Mom & Dad, Team 2 - Dustin, Casey and Tatiana, and team 3 - Me, Dillon and Brandee. Ashley is living in Hawaii now and so since she wasn't here to participate she participated in a way by becoming our judge.  She and Grandma Hamamoto skyped with us and they were to choose the winner.  Well let me tell ya...there was all this creative craziness goin on up in thur!! That kitchen became a mess once our minds were running wild! we were grabbing anything we could think of and using it to create our masterpieces. Our house had a theme to it, it was a Hawaiian Christmas house.  We surrounded our house with sand and water that had little fishes swimming in it, Dillon made a palm tree out of chocolate covered raisins and lettuce as well as tiki torches, a roasting pig, and a little Hawaiian snow woman.  Then Brandee made the surf board and the stain glass windows and helped me to put all the detailing on the house, helped Dillon do the landscaping to give it a bit of curb appeal as well as make the ocean. The finishing touch on our house was the chimney, in the chimney we put dry ice for the "fireplace is burning" effect. 
           After several hours of creating we finally finished and got Ashley and Grandma on skype to do the judging.  Things got intense as we all sat in the front room waiting as my mom was showing the judges the houses in the kitchen and as we were waiting for the judges as they were deliberating.  Finally they announced the winner..... the judged it in three categories: most creative, most intricate and most wintery/christmasy.  Team 1 won the most intricate, team 2 won the most wintery/christmasy and team 3 (my team) won most creative. I can't imagine the tough time the judges probably had trying to decide who the winner was, all the houses were crazy good! It was so much fun.  I love doing things like this and seeing it all come together. I'll post a few pictures here but if you go to our picture page you can see more pictures of this years competition as well as last years! enjoy!

Our little neighborhood

Mom & Dads

Dustin, Casey and Tatiana

Mine, Dillon and Brandee's hale