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!

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!!

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

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.

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!

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!

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..

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!

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!

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.