PORT TOWNSEND — The annual Aldrich’s Market gingerbread house contest, which featured everything from a local church to a clock tower, achieved a certain symmetry this year: In its 19th year, it drew 19 entries.
About 25 people gathered Tuesday afternoon to hear owner Milt Fukuda announce the winners.
“We are thrilled to continue this tradition,” Fukuda said.
“Regardless of who won, I hope that everyone participating found this activity to be rewarding and fun.”
The houses will be on display until Sunday at the market at 940 Lawrence St. in Port Townsend.
All of the houses were built with gingerbread, candy and other sweet foodstuffs, providing an olfactory sugar rush to anyone who passes by.
The contest was divided into three parts: individuals younger than 12, groups younger than 12 and adults.
Patricia Lamas, who won first place in the adults’ category for her painstakingly accurate representation of St. Alban’s Anglican Church, had won first place twice, in 2005 and 2006.
Lamas is a student at St. Olaf’s College in Northfield, Minn., and finished the project in three days while working nonstop.
Second place was snagged by “Sand Castle,” built by the Davis family: Daniel, Ethan, Thea, Lia and Doren.
Maria Scheibe, a 2006 Port Townsend High School graduate who works with an architect in Brooklyn, N.Y., built a gingerbread television with peanut butter cups as control knobs that held a diorama representing “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
Scheibe, along with her friends Mariah Vane and Victoria Anderson, won third place in the adult group.
Jesse Morhbacher won first place in the individual-younger-than-12 category.
Noah Julia was awarded second place, while Sienna Fink took third.
Fukada recognized everyone in this group, which included Eva Kleen Bradt, Noah Holly and Lillian Morrison, with a gift certificate.
Morrison also entered the younger-than-12 group contest with her sister, Maria, while the other group included Maeve and Isla Mera Kenney, Jeanette Patrick, Zoe Lennox, Quinn Lennox and Zia Magill.
There were only two group-younger-than-12 entries.
Ray Grier’s entry, “Hickory Dickory Dock,” duplicated a clock tower, with a working 2-inch clock embedded into the gingerbread structure.
Grier, a Port Townsend resident who has participated in both the gingerbread contest and the Kinetic Skulpture Race every year, provided a back story for his display, with explanatory notes about the entry and why he participates each year.
“You are looking into the living room of a gingerbread house located somewhere in my imagination,” he wrote.
“The contest is fun, and the leftover dough gives me an excuse to make yummy cookies.”
The eventual disposition of the houses are up in the air, with some people planning to save the art and others expecting to use them as a continuing snack source.
“I don’t know what will happen to this,” Scheibe said about her entry.
“It will probably go down into the basement with the rest of the junk.”
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
