The first thing that sprung to mind when I saw the "Wellywood" theme was Narnia at Christmas. I love the work of Weta Workshop and the "Chronicle's of Narnia" reminded me of my childhood so I was able to get really into the decoration. The idea with the house is that it has to be foresty and built into the land (which alludes to Hobbiton). The waterfall emphasizes this and also represents a scene in "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" Aslan is at the forefront of the scene along with Santa's sleigh made of cardboard and licourice and filled with sweets. The swords placed around the house represent the weapons that Father Christmas presented the children in Christmas Day. Finished off with green writing icing, pebbles, hail and jubes. It took four hours, great fun for a rainy day

All our favourite things from a wellington Christmas including our favourite Wellywood films. There is a beach in the garden complete with a whale and rider, King Kong is perched on the roof and has kidnapped one of the resident gummy bears, the yellow mini from Goodbye pork pie resides in the front driveway, while the beehive in the back garden is plagued by protesters (or politicians, depending on your point of view) and the gummy bears inside enjoy a quiet peaceful Christmas meal before opening their presents... Apologies for the cheesy pun of a name, we are not great at naming things

Once upon a time there was a little girl who decided that creating a gingerbread house would be fun, and a LOL. She wanted to create a house that truely expressed the weeks before Christmas and life in Wellington. The house was a bit broken in places, reflecting the work that needed to be done over the summer period. The painting was chipped, and the lawns looked dishevelled and in need of a good mowing. But in spite of the house looking like something out of Elm Street, there was an overall essence that truely expressed Christmas. The house was put together with LOVE and many LOL's. And why the Pukeko in the photo? It is a complete mystery and there will be stories written about the why's of a strange bird beside a strange little house. (Now to clean up the mess!)

"Snow Much Fun" was created by Di Kemp of Eastbourne. It incorporates the traditional snow covered gingerbread house at Christmas time, from the jolly snowman to the not so jolly Santa in the front yard, looking slightly miffed that the gingerbread kids have a sleigh and he doesn't!!!! I've painted the windows yellow to create lights being on inside and the gingerbread kids inside the house both back and front. The green house tiles,cobblestones, doors, windows and the sleigh trays were all created from white fondant. Sweets were used to create the overall effect and everything (bar lollipop sticks) is completely edible. I've wanted to make a Gingerbread House since I was young, and finally I have had the chance to do this... and have had the best time ever. I've donated this house to be used for a Christmas fundraiser raffle for Ronald McDonald House, Wellington and I'm very humbled that they were extremely excited to receive it. Thanks for the chance not only to enter this competition, but to fulfill a childhood dream. :0)

This house is based on what a summer christmas house would look like. It has the pond out the back, and the river, the children(gummy bears) playing outside with the ball, and the christmas lunch on the table. The chimney it made up of jelly beans and the roof of licorice. As New Zealand doesn't have white christmases, I thought it would be good for the house to not be snowed over: even though in Wellington we did have snow this year =)

We wanted to capture a traditional magical Christmas scene with our gingerbread house. As well as classically festive carol singers and snowman, we added some fairytale elements. It was truly magical to make!

This Gingerbread House was made by myself and my 4 children. The decorating was all designed and decorated by my children ranging in ages from 8 - 16. Because Christmas for us is a time of special treats and special occasions we decided to choose sweet treats that we all enjoy - Jelly beans, M&Ms, Marshmallows and sour peachy hearts are some of our favourite treats. And we look forward to sharing these treats from our Gingerbread House with our family, friends and neighbours. We also included a outside Christmas garden theme which reminded us of when we were covered in snow during the Wellington winter.

This caravan has been made completely out of the gingerbread house kit. The original roof pieces are the sides of the caravan with the front 'triangle part of the house cut out and stuck onto the sides. The side panels of the house are the back of the caravan. This caravan symbolises the typical Kiwi Christmas on the beach. The water is blue jelly, the sand is dessicated coconut dyed with yellow food colouring and the grass is dessicated coconut dyed with green food colouring

This piece is a replica model of the boat houses on oriental bay, with a fisherman fishing a chocolate fish.

When we first began creating our Gingerbread house we discovered that two walls had broken in the packet. After trying numerous times to fix them we decided to use our 'Kiwi Ingenuity' and create a tent. We felt a tent was a memory of Kiwiana 2011 as many people around the country spend their summer holidays camping each year often spending this time with other family and friends. On our tent we have included symbols on each side. On one side you can see the NZ symbol and on the other a peace sign indicating New Zealand being a peaceful and nuclear free country. Surrounding the tent we have created a 'garden' of sorts showing the activities Kiwi families participate in while on holiday. These include lounging in deck chairs as well as playing soccer and rugby. We have named our tent to represent these things.

It was very interesting to come up with such a incredible design, it was fun and every thing on the Ginger Bread House can be consumed, it was my first ever Ginger House i have ever build in im life and im truly very happy about it ... and most of all im glade that i've contributed towardes the kids charity in the way i could.

We are 6 and 8 years old. We had lots of fun making and decorating our house, we also loved eating the leftover lollies and icing - Mummy helped us. We con't wait until Christmas Day when we are allowed to smash it up and eat it with our cousins!

As a family we decorate a gingerbread house each year as one of our Christmas traditions. This year we decided it would be extra fun to enter the Wellington Children's Hospital Gingerbread House competition as $10 would be donated to the Wellington Children's Hospital. We chose the Wellywood category and tried to think of what has been significant for Wellington - The Election (banners), Rugby World Cup(Team flags & rugby balls),Snow & large hail stone storms (Snowman & hail stones). We also wanted to mark Wellywood with movies such as Tintin (Snowy the dog on the roof)& Lord of the Rings (ring & hand on right).To mark the childrens hospital, which is the most important thing, we included Hospie & a thank you from the kids. We had lots of fun & the Gingerbread House is next to our Christmas tree (cos Granny is worried she will knock it over & break it!!). It was lots of fun, Caroline (Mum) & Isabel (age 12)...Thomas is 14 & too cool to help this year but will eat it.

My brothers and I had a really great time building our gingerbread house with the help of our granddad. With our ages being 5,8,14 we had lots of ideas, but we decided to go with a Christmas house (because it's our favourite time of the year). Our gingerbread house is one of Santa's favourite stops but the problem is he always gets stuck in the chimney. The Christmas tree has lots of presents underneath it for Christmas day but I hope Santa doesn't forget the ones falling of the roof. Our house has lots of our favourite sweets on it gummy bears, jelly beans, cola bottles and more. The gingerbread man is enjoying a refreshing coke-cola outside the house in the snow at Christmas just like a 'traditional' snowy Christmas.

Created by the imagination of a 4yr old & a 2.5yr old with the help of their mum and Aunty. When it was finally completed it reminded me of a Queenstown cobblestone cottage(where I used to work in my younger years) during winter, of course Santa came early and dropped lots of lollies on the roof. Lucas (2.5yr) couldn't keep his eyes or his tongue in his mouth. Was lots fun!!! and enjoy by all.

Snowman's sweet treat is just a classic, fun, colourful gingerbread house full of all sorts of sweet treats for Snowman in the garden.

My 11 year old cousin Carys on holiday from Wales made this beautifully decorated gingerbread house! It has marshmallows, fruit sweets, gummy bears and licorice! After a lot of mess making this is the result of a wicked house! We (especially Carys) hope you love our entry and we hope it tastes as good as it looks!

Designed by Vianne, Santa is standing outside out house with a sleigh full of presents. Our cat Amber is climbing out the window to see what all the noise is about. Snake lights and stars are on the roof and vegetables growing in the garden. Trying to put lots of pebbles on the roof with a 2 yr old and 6 yr old helping is a bit of a challenge in itself. Made by Fiona, Julian, Vianne (6) and Keiran (2)

When Matthew (12)reflected on Wellington and Wellywood,what first came to mind was a hobbit house, the wind mill, solar pannels (due to the sun), the sea and the cable car. In his gingerbread house(created from a house pack bought from the hospital) he tried to include all the aspects that make wellington so special to him, using only edible ingredients.

Our house was created by Jorja (8) and Aimee (13)with a little help from Mum We went for a Christmas theme with Santa suck in the chimney and candy canes on the roof and our very own chocolate snowman on our snow covered fornt lawn. This was a lot of fun to create and filled in quite a few hours and a lot of lollies were devoured.

Solar panels in the roof saving 62% of our power bill over the year. Fireplace taken ou and replace with eco heat pump (yes Santa still gets in) Dad still has not mowed the lawns but he has built in a slightly crooked path that mum is not happy with. Fresh daisies by the front door ready for picking. Xmas presents under the tree inside and the Xbox is hooked up to the T.V for the boys to spend time on, on those raining summer days. North-fork pine has had the lights put on with minimal scratches from the kids skimming up the pine. BBQ cleaned (ish) and a small pool has been set up in the yard for the month of summer And of course the main thing our family enjoying xmas except Kieron who is inside on that Xbox All edible so edible that we have had to replace the old man with a new one as he got eaten a few days go by…NO ONE … yeah right!! All Cloths Designed by Jess

Making a depiction of a Christchurch earthquake effected house was the favourite idea from the kids. Red sticker, portaloo, rubble, liquifaction, hazard tape etc. Finding the house already broken when we opened the box sealed the idea.

Our Gingerbread house was made on Christmas Eve by Jethro and Lucia with help from our close friend Lori, who spent Christmas with us. She was really excited about having a summer Christmas so we used that as our theme. Kiwi Heaven is a beachside bach with wharenui influences. We utilised iconic Kiwi lollies such as eskimos for the inhabitants, chocolate fish in the sea and smokers on the 'Roses' bbq. We included the beach as that's an important part of the Kiwi Christmas experience. The kids wanted to include a little march of penguins up the front steps as they were really interested in the story of 'Happy Feet' this year. The whale in the sea is because of the orca who have visited Wellington Harbour this Summer. And the best part will be eating it!

Santa's workshop is now entirely edible! White chocolate roof tiles line the roof with scrumptious lollie lights to frame it. Sitting proudly at the door is a snowman and a big Christmas tree with presents for all nestled underneath. Santa's workshop has never looked so delicious!

Fun activity with my cousins on Christmas Day 2011

A group of new entrants at Hataitai School in Wellington (Whakaari class) decorated this gingerbread house on their last day of school as a super fun activity. Kids had a great time decorating this house and they really enjoyed eating it afterwards for morning tea! Yum Yum!

This is my first gingerbread house that I have decorated. I have been dreaming of this since I was eight years old, I am now twelve. Everything on my gingerbread house is eatible except the sticks on the lollipops. The only help I got was gluing the house together but I did all the decorating myself. My gingerbread house reminds me of Christmas and the colours of a rainbow. This is my dream house yum! My mums going to make this something me and mum do every year, Even better all the money raised is going to a great cause.

This is our 2nd year at making a ginger bread house and now the girls are right into it and its not christmas until the ginger bread house is made. Design, construction and artwork all done by Ruby (3) & Jordan (5) with a little bit of help from Dad.

Our house was a combined effort of creativity...we made windows from melted lollipops, snowman made from marzipan, christmas trees are also marzipan, with icing sugar sprinkled over for the snowy effect! We put tealight candles to make it look like someone was home...a welcoming house!

With a lot of help from my 7 and 12 year old this has become one of our favourite Christmas traditions - and is always left until Christmas Eve! We have lots of snow on and around the cottage, with wafer biscuit roof tiles, licorice trims and other favourite lollies as flowers and decorations on the house

Our Gingerbread House arrived in pieces, after trying many times to glue it back together we decided to go for the old wooden bach by the beach. For us the pohutukawa tree is an essential beach side icon, with a swing, a small wooden bach with a red tin roof and the toys of summer lying around - that evokes memories of Kiwiana for our family! Each child had a project; Cared made the Pohutukawa tree, Fiann made the surf boards, cricket set and back porch, Nea was in charge of the sea, sand and house decorations and Cashel made the shell path. We had a lovely time making it and everyone is keen to try again next year! :)

I decided to use different textures of chocolate for the log cabin and to make the Christmassy garden out of sweets and other edible items. I made a decorated Christmas tree with an angel at the top, and a snow man who looked like he was singing carols when his nose dropped out!

Each night Ken (Dad) worked on assembling the gingerbread house – needing to practice perfecting the icing sugar cement after a minor mishap of the roof sliding off! Each following morning the kids, Jackson (6) and Jessica (2) would be so excited to see the transformation from the night before – it was obvious to them that the 'gingerbread fairies' were hard at work while they slept. At the final stage they had such a wonderful time decorating the roof and were both very pleased with how it looked. Jackson suggested we give it to someone who didn't have one for Christmas, so with his help we've selected a Gisborne rest home, where it's being delivered today!

I wanted my house to look like a traditional scene with snow on the ground and on the roof. I made icicles from icing glue, the path from M&M’s and the wreaths from gummy lollies. I did most of the building myself but my mum helped me stick the walls together. The first time we put the roof on the walls collapsed and my bother red stickered the house. Because he wanted to eat it before I had finished. But fortunately with help from mum I managed to get it finished.

We did this as a family activity. It was great to sit at the table and do this together and we all loved what we have made. Mum,Dad,Kashiya and Troy.

This house captures the theme of Halloween around Wellington when everyone dresses up in scary masks etc... This gingerbread house shows some of those people who go all on on there houses and make them as scary as they can! Our design of this is to show that in the front of the house it looks all pretty and inviting for kids but out the back its all scary with a graveyard and blood trail. Hope you enjoy the photos =)

Created by first time decorators, we had real fun wondering around New World and Moore Wilsons trying to find things that would work to decorate. Made a sponge for the beach, made jelly in three layers using purple, blue and green for the ocean (in one photo you can even still see the white breaker icing sugar - before it melted into jelly!) and discovered coconut shavings combined with green and a splash of yellow food colouring is the most awesome grass in the world! Aleahs class mates all got to eat it the next morning, poor old Dad didn't even get to taste it even though he stuffed all the left over lollies into the house! Everyone who saw it was totally wow'd. Pity Dad's camera isn't the best!

I went for simplicity: two kinds of strawberry lollies and giant marshmallows. The nearest category is Christmas because of the red.

While Santa got stuck down the chimney, Rudolph had a lovely time with the carrots but left without tidying up. He also left a little present of his own. The house was decorated by Liardet (8) and Sammy (10) who first meet in 2011 in the Children's ward at Wellington Hospital. There are milk bottles at the gate, a bright blue mail box, a happy snowman, helpful mice and lots and lots of lollies. Liardet thought it tasted goooood.

Gaby (3 1/2 years old) was very excited when her grandmother bought her this gingerbread house to make during the Christmas holidays. She could barely contain herself with excitement, and kept going back into the kitchen for days after we made the house, just to look at it. She did an expert job at sticking the pebbles on the front of the house.

This was decorated by Hamish (10), Duncan (8) and Louise (3), after it was constructed by their mother, Judy. Submitted by their grandmother.

"the mushrooms with rainbow things are men." This was a present from Jamie (8) and Daniel's (6) Aunty Anne. I (their Mum) bought the sweets, wishing (myself) to do a hippy holiday house - but the boys were so excited and interested - I left them to it. It took 2 days, was loads of fun for us all, and we wish we could also send you the video (it shows the "inside" really well. Thank you for designing the base product!)

What epitomises Kiwiana in 2011 but a year of growth and development in the lives of 5 Kiwi kids and how they use their new knowledge, skills and memories (along with a lot of icing and lollies) to create two Kiwi Gingerbread Houses! Our boys, Rafe (7), Keir (6), Matz (4) and Torr (2), with the able assistance of next door neighbour Tony (7) created two Kiwiana gingerbread houses. While Mum glued then together, the total creative licence and decorative construction was theirs. They decided it was important for them as kids to do everything because they wanted to make something special for the kids in the Wellington Hospital that @goginger4kids was all about. They also decided they only wanted to use the lollies they could buy from their local dairy because that's part of Kiwi life. The end result can be seen in the photos. Rafe especially wanted to point out the "strands of (jellybean) christmas lights across the roof like Kiwi houses". Matz said "the lolly snakes are actually worms from the garden because we don't have real snakes here". The boys were thoroughly entertained for almost two hours on their creation. Ashough the volume of roof lollies did cause a roof cave-in on one house on Christmas Eve we agreed this was caused by the Christchurch earthquake after-shock - despite being in Auckland, hence only minimal damage. We've thoroughly enjoyed this 'christmas project'. Right from dashing out of a meeting in Wellington to get to the Abel Tasman Hotel to pick up our gingerbread sets and package them up to fly them home safely to Auckland courtesy of Air New Zealand. Through the very late night house construction (supported of course by tins of Watties spaghetti whilst drying the 'glue' in true Kiwiana fashion). And then the boys decoration project which was well-admired by all and sundry who enjoyed a sunny Kiwi christmas day at our house. Before the next most important bit - eating it! (we're still going on that part) And to know that the funds go to a good Kiwi kids cause makes it even more worthwhile. Thanks Prime Hotels and all the best Wellington Children's Hospital.

Inspired by winters in the Northern Hemisphere. This gingerbread house was decorated using differnt lollies. Everything used was edible, inlcluding the christmas tree and snowman!

When I heard that Wellywood was one of the categories i thought..... why not do the actual Wellywood sign how much better can it get!

Made by my mummy Nadine and me. Callum, I am 4 years old and I did some of the glueing and most of the sticking on of lollies. My favourite bits were putting the gummy bears on and sampling the lollies as I stuck them on.

This Winter Wonderland was made by my cousins, Jack (11) and Katie (10) Mawdesley, under the supervision of my Grandma, Jean and myself. I love spending time with my Jack and Katie in the holidays and making the gingerbread house was so much fun, they are already making plans for next year's entry! Jack's favourite part was making the forest with the marshmellow trees, especially the white "snow-covered" ones. Katie loved making the iciles with Grandma Jean and found it a challenge putting them on. It tasted delicious when we ate it, but it was sad to see it go.

After 3 weeks of staring at the box I finally decided to do a 'homage' to Peter Jackson. King Kong sits on top of 'Weta Cave' with Gollum creeping out of the front door. There is a Hobbit hole in the garden as well as some 'Heavenly Creatures' and some 'Frighteners', all drawn to the power of the One Ring. Everything is edible and mostly held together with spaghetti. I also wanted to include a 'Wellywood' sign in the style of the new 'Wellington' sign, its made out of biscuit. I have never attempted one of these before, a new holiday tradition for our first Christmas in a new country. Its amazing what you can do with a pizza cutter, knitting needle and a husband who works in construction!

I was inspired by mosaic tiles and my son's love for M&Ms! Had a great time decorating the house and creating the little Xmas scene outside. Already looking forward to doing it again next year!!

I thought what is more kiwiana than a Marae, so i set out to make the closest gingerbread version of a Marae I could think of. After gathering only brown, black, red and white lollies i set to constructing and decorating my gingerbread house. After spending several hours decorating it only for it to be home alone over the Christmas break the house was delivered to one of the local Hospice's.

patch work roof made from circles of fondant as to look decromastic. (reinforced with extra ginger bread and royal icing because it started to fall over) made in memory of the imperfectly perfect beach houses of my childhood

i am 15 years old. The gingerbread house was a gift from my Nannie and Papa for something fun to do in the holidays. i thoroughly enjoyed icing and decorating it with lollies and then eating the leftover lollies. the next day i took the gingerbread house up to my Nannies and Papa's where it was enjoyed by the whole family it was really fun to do and it is great that money from each one sold goes to a great cause.

This fantastic work of art was a team effort, used as a christmas celebration/team building activity. It was created following main brain storming sessions and was created by staff over a weekend in mid december. What a great idea as a team building activity! It was then eaten by the children of staff at our christmas function

Our entry has memories of Kiwiana 2011 on it. It has the Rugby World Cup with the rugby field, world cup, Allblacks bus and Allblacks photo on it. It also has some Kiwi jandals and L&P bottles on it with a silverfern on the roof. There is also some further memories added to it being the Christchurch earthquake, Happy Feet being released and the Memorial for the Pike River Mine disaster least we forget. It has both happy and sad memories amongst it.

My daughter Helena (3 years) and me created this house. It has a Marshmallow King Kong reaching for the 'one ring' and a Giant Weta climbing on one side of the roof while the other side of the roof is covered in 'jelly bean film strips'. There is also a film camera on the roof. The house itself is covered in 'ice cream wafer weatherboard'. One of the entry doors is a round hobbit hole door. There are little blue penguins on one site of the house while on the other side the letters of the name 'Wellington' are blown about by the wind. One the corners of the house and on the roof are golden 'gummi bear academy awards'. In the house live famous movie characters who are looking out through the windows.

Whilst the design, planning and decorating was fun and a great way to spend some relaxed time in the hols for mum and the kids, by far the best part was "smashing" and eating it! As soon as it was made we had the constant chant "can we smash it yet?" which was finally done on Christmas day with a Tee ball bat. It was DELICIOUS nom nom :)

I am Saffron and I live in Raumati Beach,I am 9 years old. My Mum and my little brother helped me make the icing and hold the walls until they set. Then I decorated the rest myself. It was a lot of hard work but I enjoyed putting the time into it. I had fun creating the garden and making the letterbox. I did eat some of the chocolate buttons that are the roof tiles. I am pleased that the money is going to charity for children, my auntie bought the house for me for Christmas.

it took two days to complete, I wanted to make it as christmasy as i could with lots of yummy goodies to eat.

Our Christmas holidays would not be complete without the addition of our dog - so it was only fitting our gingerbread cottage should come complete with a gingerbread dog kennel! Extra gingerbread was made for shutters, doors, a chimney, letterbox, trees and kennel while pretzels were used for the picket fence and window panes. The roof is made out of Griffin's stripes biscuits - refraining from eating a single one was probably the hardest task of all - 2 packets were exactly enough!! The snowmen are very happy to have taken up position in the front garden but are concerned for when the sun comes out.. or when a hungry human comes along..

Dedicated to 85 year old Grandpa Jack, who sits outside his seaside bach overseeing his grandchildren swimming in the sea, this Kiwiana Xmas house is all about love, family and our outdoorsy, fun Christmases in summery New Zealand. As a shark approaches his grandchildren, Grandpa Jack, drinking his Tui Beer and taking in a little too much sun, is too relaxed to notice. Thankfully 97 year old Grandma Rice is keeping a sharp eye on things from upstairs, alerting Grandpa Jack's faithful wife, Marion, to the danger at hand! Thank you Grandpa Jack for making our summer Christmases full of fun and happiness.

We live in Miramar and we love going to the Roxy Cinema (and we also love to show it off to all our friends from out of town) so we decided to decorate our gingerbread house to look like the Roxy. We have used purple icing because The Roxy is painted purple. The yellow in the doorway is the yellow lights in the entrance to Roxy and the red smarties are to match the red painting on the front of Roxy. We have decorated using lollies that you would eat when you go to the movies and the roof is covered with popcorn.

A lot of technical planning went into this year's entry by Caitlin & Isabella. After entering last year we started to discuss this year's entry from about March! Both girls decided to detail what type of lollies were going to be used and it was decided that each member of the family was represented with their favourite lolly! Caitlin (aged 8) drew up the "plans" for each piece of of the house and to where the lollies would be placed, Isabella (aged 6) oversaw the actual placement. It was a family occasion and we decorated the house first then in between working from home, preparing Christmas dinner in advance and wrapping presents the house was constructed. Yet again we had so much fun as a family, but the really sweet part of the Gingerbread House is that our girls both asked if some money was going to help sick kids too. What a great charity to support - we'll be entering again next year!

This is based on the popuar Tim Burton Christmas film 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' It features Jack Skellington in his snow man form when visiting 'Christmas town'. It also has the town Christmas tree.

There have been so many great things happening in NZ in 2011 that one experience was not enough. I decided to bring them all to life in this Kiwi exstraveganza!!!

We really wanted to make Hospi's House for the competition. Hospi is made out of mandarins and licorice allsorts. There are flowers growing out of the windows because he lives in a jungle. This entry is 100% edible - in fact it is 100% eaten!

We always have fun thinking up new ideas for the Ginger Bread House Competition as a family :) As you can see we went with the Wellywood theme and this is what we came up with ;) We have the Wellywood sign on the top with the famous hobbit huts. The fabulous Roxy cinema with famous characters from movies made in here in Wellywood!

This house was inspired by our trip to Sweden where gingerbread is eaten regularly at Christmas and where they really make an effort to decorate their houses at Christmas.

My stepmother Ruth and I made it on Christmas Eve. Its a fairytale white christmas house. The green trees at the front are made from marshmallows. The lollies stuck all over the roof remind me of Hansel & Gretel.

This house was constructed by Amelie (aged 9) and Mackenzie (aged 8)on their favourite christmas Nutcracker story, the Barbie ballet version. Mackenzie was very keen to enter this competition as she wants to win an iPad for her sister Amelie. Amelie is very autistic, and attends the special needs unit at Johnsonville Primary school. She cannot cope with the noise and disruption in the unit, so we want to shift her into the normal class to work in parallel, and give her more opportunities to develop the social and communication skills she finds so hard. To do this, we need to provide an iPad to set up her own workspace, and we cannot afford this. This is Mackenzie's big chance to make a real difference for Amelie. With a little help on the glue stages, the pair set to decorate this, making all manner of colored icing and experimenting with decorations - the chocolate fish later became an icing swan, unfortunately hidden in the final picture. So please enjoy the Nutcracker ballet story, created by my children.

This gingerbread house was created by Maddie Gillespie (8) with some help from her brother Aidan (4) - they were a super brother and sister team working well together (even if Aidan did eat quite a few of the decorations along the way!). Maddie decided to create her vision of a Kiwi bach at Christmas - all the ideas for the design and what to use were solely hers. The Pohutakawa was decorated with dried cranberries and pebbles to look like the flowers blooming at Christmas time. The watertank was made of stacked up dried apples. The porch made out of dried apple sticks. Shells and rocks on the sand represented by pebbles and dried coconut. The boat was a wedge of apple. The roof was decorated with cut up licorice made to look like slates. The jellybeans on the bach were placed in rows to look like wooden slates. To complete the scene a chocolate fish was placed jumping out of the sea. Maddie and Aidan had a great time over the few days leading up to their first Christmas in Wellington making this house. They both felt very happy to know their efforts were helping other kids - and they of course loved eating it on Christmas day!

I was inspired by my design following the snow falling in Wellington. Myself and my family had a great time making it look like a real winter wonderland. This also reminded me of when I used to live in the UK and wake up with a light dusting of snow.

I love sugar coated lollies and m n m's and i really wanted to include them in a house that looks colourful and yummy.I created a circular pattern on the back of the house with the different coloures of the m n m's and a somewhat symetrical arrangement of the sugar coated lollies on the front of the house. I put a cat lollie on the roof because where i live we see cats sitting on the roof. We have a flower garden with a path/gate and also Santa standing at the entrance.

We were excited to find a gingerbread house kitset to buy as we've decorated these for a few years now, but in Thailand where we lived. While building the house we had a couple of days of very humid weather and the gingerbread got rather 'soggy' so, apart from wooden ice block sticks shoring up the inside, the whole house is edible. We tried to fix it with sugar glue but it was really too, too soft! Surrounded by bags of lollies and working powered by sugar and food colouring, we designed our creation. Santa is up on the roof with a bottle of coke and a pile of snowballs ready to use the force of gravity to beat the snowman down below in the yearly snowball fight. The ground is covered with snow of all the colours of the rainbow as the colours of New Zealand delight and amaze us daily. In the garden we have a small pool with a mini chocolate fish enjoying a mid-winter swim, (silly fish) and the garden behind the snowman has oddly tomato sauce bottle shaped plants pushing their way out from under the snow. Traditional chewy milk bottles are waiting at the door for the occupants to wake up and make their early morning cuppa tea. Inside the house, not able to be seen in the photos, the pile of gifts are waiting under the Christmas tree for excited children to open and delight in.

I was given this Gingerbread House kit as a present from my friend for my 10th birthday. I had so much fun making it. I'm really happy about it. My favourite part was putting the decorations on. I hope I win.

Rugby has always been one of New Zealands greatest sports achievements and winning the rugby world cup in 2011 we thought was a huge highlight of the year! We loved the energy and excitement in New Zealand during the World cup and everyday was a celebration. 2011 in New Zealand was all about the rugby World cup and we celebrated that by creating this kiwiana ginerbread house. Emma cut and painted all the flags of participating countries in the World Cup by hand. We thought the shinny candy balls on the silverfern gave it an extra special touch. WE hope you enjoy the kiwiana spirit of our RWC ginger bread house and Marshmallow Piri <3

I am 9 years old, and I love animals, and I love Christmas, so I chose to decorate my gingerbread house as a Christmas House for Happy Feet, the penguin, who arrived on Wellington's Kapiti Coast after getting lost at sea. As Happy Feet was feeling exhausted from his trip he spent some time at Wellington Zoo getting well before setting off on his journey again. Happy Feet lost his transmitter, so we don't know where he is now, however I hope that he is back with his family and friends. My gingerbread house is imagining what it might be like for Happy Feet celebrating Christmas, and you can see his house has signposts to both the South Pole and the Kapiti Coast so that now he won't get lost again!

Our fantasy garden filled with wonders in front of our magicall mystery house. Green icing coconut grass and a totally over the top roof! The decking around the back and side are made of wholemeal crackers. This is a christmas pixie gnome fairy house !

It's christmas time and it's hot. Most stuff happens outside. We used lots of wafers for outdoor furniture (table, barbie, surfboard) but found the only way to get m&m's to stick to the wall was to first make panels with wafers pre-stuck with m&m's. Lots of lovely green grass icing.

Nestled within a gingerbread forest is a quaint gingerbread house. The large light up "Merry Christmas" sign and colourful sparkling lights lining the roof, guide Santa to the chimney. His red sack is filled with teddies and parcels for the children sleeping soundly inside. The house is decorated with more Christmas lights (including a light up bell) and a Christmas wreath. Snow has settled on the star detailed fence surrounding the house and a gummy snake pathway winds its way from the front door, through the snow groomed lawn and out into the rough snow covered forest. Santa truly has discovered a winter wonderland.

Our gingerbread house is very unique. It has wonderful Candyfloss tress, with jelly bean path and lovely, eatable grass. We have taken our time and spent a long time thinking about our design, and worked with delicacy and very gentally with all the presentation. we did our roof with lots of different types of lollies with different colour to make it stand out and look great!!

Hi my name is Valetta Pritchard, I am 9 years old and go to OLV school in Christchurch. When I opened up the package a few pieces were broken so I came up with the idea that this was going to be my earthquake Christmas house. My nanny made the white paste for me and helped me put together the pieces. At the front of my house there are lollipop lights and a snowman to greet everyone. I also put 3 gummy bears on the roof who are santa and his 2 elves. I also put some gummy bears looking behind the windows looking for santa. Even though in Christchurch our houses get broken, they can always be fixed. What was important for us was to have a great Christmas with our family. We left Christchurch and had a great time as my Nanny and Papa put up all their Christmas decorations up for us as we couldn't have decorations or a tree this year because our house is getting fixed and we are living in a motel for now. I had heaps of fun decorating this gingerbread house.

Sophia 5 and Zara 4 love christmas and gingerbreadmen so what better way to make it than putting them together. Sophia and Zara (and a wee bit of help from me) planned exactly what they wanted to do by making a drawing and then heading towards the supermarket to buy their goodies. They made the grass out of dry coconut and green food colouring (they looked like little martians when they finished with the colouring!) The roof is made out of ice cream wafers and then topped with icing and coconut. Then they got to the fun bits decorating with m&m's on the front and back and candy sticks on the side of the house, but i truly think that many m&m's have disappeared......ummmm into someones little tummys! The girls used marshmellows for the fence and finally added Mr & Mrs Gingerbread to the front of their home along with their snail friends. They have had a fantastic time and lots of giggles making this over several days, so we hope that you all enjoy the pictures and hope it brings warm fuzzies as much as it does to us!!

Me and my daughter Shanille made this gingerbread house for my workplace at Wellington Hospital Heart and Lung Unit. Shanille was so glad to see that her work had put a smile on every unwell patients face everytime they stop and look at it. Most of the cancer patients from children's hospital had the chance to see it too!

Our children were given this kit by their Aunty in Tawa, so we thought they should really decorate it them selves. I assembled the house and let them at it. The result is what happens when you let a 6 year old (George), 4 year old (Olivia) and 18 month old (Clark) at a sticky gingerbread house. I (Dad/Paul... 34 yr old!) helped George do the icicles, he did about half of them himself, and came up with most of the ideas, like the trees. They ate more lollies than they put on, but had a fantastic time doing it!

This is the first gingerbread house I have made. I like the lolly bushes and the sprinkled heart path. Can you see that the lollies on the roof are the colour of the rainbow? It was really hard to make the icing stick on the walls. I love the roof top - that was easier to ice. It took me and mum 8 hours to make. Best of all was eating it. Yum. Lots of love Betty Jo age 6yrs old.

This is a typical kiwi musterers hut found in the back country. It comes complete with sheep, firewood and a bench seat. The roof is made to look like rusty red corrugated iron.

We have bought this Ginger Bread kit as a family Christmas present and as way of helping the Wellington Children's Hospital. It wasn't until January that we started brain storming, we decided to have a Ginger Bread "Marae", an obvious choice to us of "kiwiana" and Mum thought it really suited the Ginger Bread house. We made a plan and bought loads of supplies. It wasn't till a week before the entries closed that we started building it. We were very strict on how we built it because, thanks to our Maori teacher Tane, and Robert's many visits to maraes around the country, we had been taught what a marae actually was, what it looked like, and what it was used for. We took it at our own pace and did a bit at a time; also along the way we enjoyed some left overs, yum yum! We learnt about team work, patience, different ways of using food and chocolate and a bit of maths. Sarah (12).

This is the most exciting and extraordinary holiday project we had ever done as a family. Robert (13) came up with the ingenous plan, Sarah (12), Jacoba (9 year old niece) and Rachel (4) all spent hours and hours designing and creating and taste testing!! The kids wanted it to be very authentic so the extra window and door holes in the kit got patched up with Gingernut biscuits and icing glue. The front wall got shifted in to create the deep veranda space and a pole was made out of chocolate covered wafer sticks. We added colour with lots of red licorice straps cut up for the wooden carved panels, the side walls have chocolate finger 'pungas', the roof has chocolate coated vanilla wafers, and chocolate figures were found to decorate the front of the marae, the white walls are white chocolate, Kitkat bars and Tim Tams for the front entrance, the grass is coconut coloured with green food colouring, cola sour straps for the path, choc. licorice sticks for the wall. VERY CHOCOLATEY!!

We made this gingerbread house all spotty because it looks like stars in the sky

My gingerbread house is the old woolshed down the back of the farm. I spent many summers helping parents with the sheep growing up and it is one of my favourite memories as a child. House is covered with colour fondant and indented with corrugated card for the roof and using a knife to create the wood. Sheep are cauliflower, black jelly beans and licorice.

My Aunt and I made this house. I (Andrew) am eight years old. I thought that the penguins looked like 'Happy Feet' and are cute. I am still eating it!

My two beautiful grandsons ages 6 years and 3 years decorated this gingerbread house aspart of their Kiwi Christmas with Katie (Granma).