Gingerbread Houses

Yesterday, Sam, Kedzie and I made our way to the lovely Grove Park Inn. Sam and I always comment: we forget how beautiful that place is until we visit. It really is amazing.

This is the size of the firewood needed for their gigantic fireplaces.

They had this sleigh set up in one of the 2 giant fireplaces.

Every year the Grove Park hosts a national gingerbread house competition. I'm not sure of the official rules, but I am pretty sure that everything in the house must be edible and partly made out of gingerbread. These houses are amazing. So creative and so meticulous. Here are a few examples. (It was hard to get pictures of most of them with all the people gathered around).

It's hard to tell but this one was the First Family's holiday home. That's Obama on the roof going down the chimney. (It really did look like him!)

A little creepy, but amazing nonetheless.

Kedzie had a blast crawling all over and checking out all the Christmas trees (they had about 30 in the area we were in all decorated with a different theme).

The displays are laid out around the Inn and there is no charge to come see them. I think we spent a few dollars to add a hot cocoa to the merriment. It's a beautiful place that really put us all in the Christmas spirit.