By Sarah Nagem
snagem@salisburypost.com
LANDIS ó For seven Corriher-Lipe Middle School students, the holiday season came very early this year.
Students in the Rock the House club started working on a gingerbread house design last May, when many people were planning their summer vacations.
And these kids have been designing, baking, icing and decorating ever since.
“This was supposed to be a house, but it ended up a castle,” eighth-grader Jeremiah Bradshaw said last week as he admired the club’s finished product.
The students’ hard work paid off. They won second place in the teen division in the National Gingerbread House Competition in Asheville this week.
The winners were announced Monday evening at the Grove Park Inn, where the competition took place.
“They’re exhausted this morning, but they’re running on adrenaline,” Corriher-Lipe art teacher Lynn Haynes said Tuesday.
Five members of the group traveled with their families to Asheville for the competition, Haynes said.
Rock the House is an exclusive club at Corriher-Lipe. Each year, students submit an essay explaining why they should be selected to help build a gingerbread house.
The seven students chosen this year are Bradshaw, Chelsi Russ, Kaitlin Lane, Sarah Forgays, Whitney Hardison, Miranda Raymond and Katelyn Roberts.
The project has become a tradition at the school. Students won first place in the teen division at the national competition three years ago, the first year the school entered.
The next year, the group placed in the top 10, Haynes said. Last year, students created a gingerbread replica of the school, but they didn’t enter the contest.
This year, though, they went all the way.
“One day we were out of school,” Russ, an eighth-grader, said. “We didn’t even have to be here, but we were here until 5 o’clock.”
The students started meeting twice a week after school last spring to brainstorm. A few weeks ago or so, they began meeting three times a week to wrap up the project.
The result is an octagon-shaped gingerbread castle two feet wide and two feet tall.
Peppermint sticks topped with upside-down ice cream cones serve as columns around the castle. Surrounding the castle are goodies like presents, a drum and crayons.
Forgays said her favorite part is the Christmas tree on top of the castle. A closer look reveals the Rice Krispies treat under green icing students molded to look like leaves.
“That’s what is outstanding to me,” Forgays, 13, said. “It completes it, basically.”
Students used fondant, a type of icing, to design the castle and its surroundings.
Details matter. With steady hands, students used black icing to draw door knockers and hinges on the double-door entrance to the castle.
“It’s like glue when it dries,” Lane said of the fondant.
The students melted candy to create stained-glass windows for the castle.
“That’s one of my favorite parts,” Hardison said.
While making a gingerbread castle sounds like fun, the students practiced valuable skills, too, said Sharon Edwards, a life skills teacher at Corriher-Lipe who leads the club with Haynes.
Students measured the angles of the castle and studied dimensions to make sure the project didn’t exceed the height and width requirements, Edwards said.
“Patience,” Forgays replied when asked what she learned from the project.