Gingerbread Houses

An update on my week:

• The sample contact for my right eye is giving me fits
• Finished my digital Branson Christmas book (the photos I've been sharing in my blog since Thanksgiving) and got it ordered
• We wrapped (at the most) six books during my two hours at Barnes & Noble last night but it was fun being with the gals
• Different times thought I was starting to get a cold, so different times I've been eating (aka taking at appropriate times) Advil Cold and Sinus
• Work - weird like usual

Speaking of work, my manager's manager is out of our South Carolina office and she wanted our three teams to compete in a gingerbread house contest with her teams down there.  I think it was Tuesday we met for an informational huddle:

• Each team was provided with a pre-boxed gingerbread house kit
• Each team was given $500 in pretend money to bid on a list of candy to use on their house
• Each team could ONLY use what was in the kit and what they won during the candy auction
• But they could use EVERYTHING in the kit and from the candy they won in the auction
• Cans of additional frosting were purchased for each team - along with a box of food coloring

Some of the items to be auction were:  Peeps snowmen, Peeps Christmas trees (Mike loved Peeps and would eat a whole box in one sitting - waaayyy too much sugar for me), two bags of silver Hershey kisses, two bags of gold Hershey kisses, a bag of red Twizzlers, a bag of Lifesavers, a bag of Dum Dum pops, etc.  Some things went very cheap ($15 for Peeps snowmen) and some things didn't ($260 for the Twizzlers).

Teams were broken down into smaller groups to rotate in and out to work on their house Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - we still had to get some work produced during the day :)  Photos were taken this morning and emailed to SC so our houses could be included in the voting for best house/creation.  Then we had an internal competition between our three teams with the phone team that shares our floor doing the voting.  Unfortunately a team in SC won - but those teams had unlimited funds to buy supplies and they could use any material - so the winning creation was of the Las Vegas strip - which was awesome.

Below are photos of the houses/creations - from several angles in an attempt to capture everything.  Look at the pictures closely for the smallest of details these teams made - it's amazing.  After the voting results were given Zach (my manager) said this may become a yearly event because everyone had fun doing this.

3rd place in our internal competition.

Winning team gets ice cream sandwiches.

2nd place and they get pizza.

It's hard to tell in the photos but to the left is a snow hill to tube and snow board down.

In front of the house is an ice rink.

1st place - this team gets to pick lunch brought in from one of four restaurants.

The small building in the back right is a tipped over outhouse with Santa falling out of it being

pushed over by a Peeps snowman.  This team wanted to nuke a Peeps snowman to make the Abominable Snowman - and while it was fun watching the nuking it didn't quite work out like they had hoped :)