Prep for gingerfest 2006

Gingerslam 2006 is coming up this Friday and everything is almost built. Kirk and Laura have graciously helped out this year with all the construction work. With the extra help, it took much less time to make all the pieces and assemble them. Also, with new people came a new theme, it is no longer a "gingerslum", but a "gingercastle" (which I suspect will have some bad parts of town still present).

This photo shows the disaster the kitchen becomes during the construction phase. It is an explosion of sugar and gingerbread and tools of construction everywhere.


















There are the usual buildings showing up from years past...























...and several new buildings, the most significant being the castle. The castle will have 4 towers that were a challenge to build. Gingerbread wants to be flat, not three dimensional. The following photo shows many of the buildings, including the round towers.


















This is a collection of the tools of the trade. To make the towers, we cut a tall V8 can in half and draped the gingerbread over it while it baked. This worked in concept, but there needs to be some tweaking in the process to get consistent results. Maybe Anastasia can give us some ideas how to incorporate "Lean" and six sigma quality concepts. Also in the photos are the templates made out of manila folders. These are used as patterns when cutting out the pieces.























Gingerslam 2006 photos will be up on this blog sometime after next weekend.

Here are photos from past years....

The first Gingerslum was 2002 at Jens' place in Fremont.















This is from the very first Gingerslum in 2002
























I think this is 2003



















I think 2004 was the "year without a gingerslum" because I was deep in the middle of my upstairs bath remodel.

This is 2005