20th annual Gingerbread Village UPDATE

Our team gingerbread house: Aladdin’s Castle, is getting closer and  closer to completion.

With only 4 & 1/2 weeks until the Grand Unveiling at the Sheraton in Seattle our team has been kept plenty busy!
Since we last updated here is the progress we have had:
1) Designed and fabricated the towers
2) Designed and fabricated the Orbs sit on top of the towers
3) This is the most exciting – we were assigned our ELF!

First I will start with our Elf this year as really this is what this event is all about. We are so proud to announce our Elf:  Miss Julianna. Julianna is 8 years old and has lived with type 1 diabetes since being diagnosed on Christmas day in 2008 at just four years old. Since then team Julianna has raised more than $60,000 towards juvenile diabetes. Woo Hoo!

From lemonade stands to bake sales Julianna is very involved in helping raise money to find a cure to Type 1 diabetes – and she is just a DOLL! We are all delighted to have Julianna on our team.

Miss Julianna, her mom, her little sister and one of the fellow chef’s from the MBA

Now, we all know that Aladdin’s castle has tall towers with orbs on top. The main problem we faced was how we were going to achieve the goldeness as well as the shape of the orbs. Well, luckily for us we have one crafty architect on our hands who quickly set out to solve the problem.
Eric very crafily decided to crate the shape and foundation for the towers out of bent tin. He hand cut and shaped each one (how many bandaids he had when all was said and done – we will never know.) Take a look at his process!

Once the towers were all finished then we set to work figuring out how to get that signature look of the orbs. It wasn’t too long and our team had that figured out too, and it was blown sugar.
Some of our team contacted the Lake Washington Votech school and they were delighted to help us with the blown sugar endeavor. Even our elf came out to help us!
It is quiet the process with careful handling required, but the end result is gonna be amazing on the gingerbread castle.

Starts off as a big gooey blob of melted sugar
Then you start to stretch the sugar
Once the desired consistency is reached you put the blob on the end of a hand pump and carefully inflate it
Our Elf is helping Eric get the Orb just right!
Almost done!
Finished orbs – BEFORE we painted them
They are gonna look AMAZING!

Great job Team Aladdin’s Castle and thank you so much to our Elf Julianna and her family for coming out to help out!