Gingerbread creations: Annual contest entries include a barn, carousel and even one of downtown Goldsboro.
By Becky Barclay
Published in News on December 4, 2016 1:45 AM
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Karin Thompson made a carousel that rotates and had lights all around the top. She started on the project late and it wasn't easy, but she finished it in time for the gingerbread house competition.
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News-Argus/SETH COMBS
Victoria Murphey-Spence didn't have any kind of plan in mind when she made her winning gingerbread house. She just decorated it as she went along.
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News-Argus/SETH COMBS
Karin Thompson made a carousel that rotates and had lights all around the top. She started on the project late and it wasn't easy, but she finished it in time for the gingerbread house competition.
Full Size
News-Argus/SETH COMBS
Karin Thompson made a carousel that rotates and had lights all around the top. She started on the project late and it wasn't easy, but she finished it in time for the gingerbread house competition.
Full Size
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Tristan's House by Tristan Daniels
Creating a gingerbread carousel wasn't easy for Karin Thompson. While baking some of the dough into a cylinder shape, it turned into one big blob instead. The very last horse didn't want to stick to the carousel and kept falling off.
But Mrs. Thompson finally worked out the kinks and even won first place in the adult category of the Arts Council of Wayne County's annual gingerbread house competition.
There were 20 entries in the contest.
"They were fantastic," said gallery director Heather Reynolds. "We had nontraditional interpretations of gingerbread this year. It is refreshing to see every entry really push the boundaries of what you can do with the medium.
"Some works were structural marvels, while others had major artistic flair. Everyone tried to do gingerbread in a more contemporary way, and many entries were first time gingerbread artists, which makes their work all the more impressive. I hope next year we can keep this level of craft and creativity."
Mrs. Thompson's entry was one of the nontraditional creations.
The 53-year-old Mrs. Thompson said she first came up with the idea several years ago when she went with her daughter's fourth-grade class to the Governor's Mansion in Raleigh.
"I guess the baker that decorates the house had this elaborate scene," Mrs. Thompson said. "I don't know if it was a carousel or a circus theme. It had all the different animals done in gingerbread.
"Between that and something else that I saw, I just through the carousel would be neat."
She drew out a plan. But when she started gathering supplies and equipment to do her carousel, Mrs. Thompson discovered all of her cookie cutters were the wrong size for the creation. She ended up using a unicorn cookie cutter and cutting off the horn and bending the front legs to make it look like it was jumping.
"I had seen an article on different ways you could decorate cookies that said you could take vodka and add food coloring to it and you can paint with it," Mrs. Thompson said. "When it dries, the vodka evaporates, but it leaves the color. So that's what I decided to do on the horses to color them. It was trial and error doing the colors for the horses."
The biggest challenge by far was keeping her dogs from eating parts of her creation.
"They sat underneath it and just waited for anything to fall," Mrs. Thompson said.
She put her carousel on a Lazy Susan so it would spin, saying that if she had had more time, she would have fixed it in a way that she could have motorized it.
"But I waited until the Tuesday before the competition to start on my carousel," she said. "Of course, it was warm and humid, so the gingerbread kept getting soft."
To make her creation more realistic and to have enough illumination to see inside the carousel, Mrs. Thompson wrapped a string of battery-operated lights around the top of the carousel.
She used candy melts instead of frosting on most of the carousel to help keep the parts from moving around. Then she used decorator icing for the piping and some of the decorations.
Mrs. Thompson's daughter entered the gingerbread house competition when it first started. She did a veterinary clinic with little reindeer outside when she was a young girl.
The mother and daughter always wanted to do one as a team.
"We had all the supplies, then we'd throw them away, then we'd get them again the next year and throw them away," Mrs. Thompson said. "This year I just decided it was time to get it done.
"I love to bake and this was fun to do. I have designs for a gingerbread cathedral with candy stained glass windows and spires. But it's going to take a lot of time to do that one."
Mrs. Thompson was glad she won, but said she didn't do it to win.
"It's been a rough 18 months for me and that was just something to take my mind off everything and go do something creative," she said. "I hope it makes people smile."
Victoria Murphey-Spence won first place in the 5- to 10-year old category with a gingerbread version of her own home. It was her first time ever entering the contest.
"It just popped into my mind and I just made it," the 5-year-old said. "I made a house and made lights on top, all covered with icing. I decorated it with gumdrops and pretzels and stuff."
Victoria made up the decorations as she went along without having any kind of plan in mind.
"It turned out great," she said. "Working on it made me feel good."
"When I found out I won, I was like, 'Hooray,'" she said throwing her arms up in the air.
Mrs. Reynolds said this is the 11th year for the contest.
"The annual gingerbread house contest is our way of inviting locals into our home for the holidays to give them a chance to shine," she said. "Gingerbread is pure fun, and anyone can enter the contest no matter their skill level. By hosting this competition, we hope families and professionals will come together to create one-of-a-kind artwork that they can share with the community to help spread a little wonder around Wayne County."
Mrs. Reynolds said the main goal of the contest is to make visitors to the display smile.
"I just love it when an unfiltered gasp comes out of someone's mouth," she said. "It's great to see and hear that others are just as pleased as we are about the great works of art that have come out of our community."