Our 1st annual DIY Gingerbread Challenge is complete and we have a winner to announce. But before we get to the Old Town Home Challenge, we wanted to give you an update on our little friendly neighborhood competition.  

Yep, it's hard to believe but we have another year of our annual neighborhood gingerbread fun under our belts. Let me tell you, the competition was fierce, the food was wonderful, the company was engaging, and the cheer was abundant. It's no surprise we look forward to this evening each year, and as with previous years it did not disappoint. 

Our gracious host Eileen had the place beautifully setup for the group's arrival. Each kit was located on the dining room table and was just waiting for everyone to get to work. After a little bit of friendly conversation and assortment of sweets and appetizers, we all got to work.

Even our good friend Kristin's plastic light up Santa made an appearance. It was a festive ambiance, that's for sure.

This year Wendy and I had a plan. We had purchased several items of "contraband" to bring to the competition. Some Golden Grams, pretzel sticks, candy canes, and Wendy's trusty cake decorating set. The plan was to start with a shingle roof using the Golden Grams and icing. I'm the trusty roofer so I got to work on the starter course.

The shingles took me FOREVER! No joke, it was probably at least an hour of work to pick through the cereal and find enough flat pieces to make a shake style roof. While I was working on the roof, Wendy was decorating the walls.

I took a few breaks during roofing to survey the competition. It seemed that the main challengers were Katie and Colin who were sitting next to us. We had loaned them our pretzels and they were making a run at a log cabin. Last year's log cabin attempted by Kristin and Brian was a bit of a failure, but this team had a better approach.

I surveyed the rest of the competition and was rather impressed with the overall progress of the group. We were moving quite slowly, to say the least.

We finally got to the assembly point of the project and spackled the whole thing together with the icing. It's seriously the most delicious building material I've ever used. Just look at that concentration.

The final step was application of the outdoor elements of the house, including the pretzel stick picket fence that I was putting together. But hey, I wasn't the only one concentrating to the fullest on the final assembly.

We took so long putting everything together that everyone else at the table was done and waiting for us. So we wrapped the whole house up and called it complete. I would have liked to do a few more items like shrubs, lights on the roof, and some icicles, but that would have taken us another hour at our rate.

Everyone put the finishing touches on their houses and we all took a step back to admire all of our handiwork (and snap a bunch of photos).

The final votes were tallied and the results announced to the group. There must have been some sort of an error, perhaps some hanging chads or malfunctioning machines, because the winners were not Wendy and me! Shocking, I know, I demand a recount! Actually, the winners of our neighborhood competition were quite deserving. It was Katie and Colin's nicely executed log cabin.

Though we may not have been the actual winners this year, we still feel like we had a pretty solid showing, and we came in second to the quaint log cabin. Here'e our finished little dwelling (complete with the beer drinking giants that apparently live in our gingerbread land. Too funny).

Not too shabby, eh? We're already looking forward to next year's competition, I think we need to start planning out our house now, and perhaps contact a few gingerbread architectural firms.

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for...

The Winner of the 2011 Old Town Home DIY Gingerbread Challenge

Last night at 12:01 am we selected a winning participant using random.org from our Gingerbread Challenge. All of the entries were deserving of the prize, which is why we're actually glad we went the random route. We'd like to thank everyone who entered and we loved seeing everyone's creative and hard work. 

And without further adue, the winner of the 2011 DIY Gingerbread Challenge and $50 to spend at Red Barn Mercantile is...

Dillon and his Greek Gingerbread Structure!

Congratulations to our winner! And a big thank you to everyone who entered. Don't forget, all of you can still receive 15% off at Red Barn Mercantile through the end of the year when you use the coupon code OLDTOWNHOME online, or mention our blog or Alex & Wendy in the store. Happy holidays!