The National Gingerbread House Competition is an annual event held at Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, United States. Finalists are placed on public display in the resort's halls each November and December. [1] The competition has been broadcast by Good Morning America on ABC, The TODAY Show on NBC, the Food Network, and the Travel Channel. [2]
The contest includes Adult, Teen, Youth and Child age categories. Hundreds of contestants from across the United States vie for more than $40,000 in prizes. Entries must fit into a 2-foot (0.61 m) cube and be composed of at least 75 percent gingerbread and be completely built from edible materials. [3] [4] Entries have included anything from merry-go-rounds to sea monsters to the Statue of Liberty – the competition is not limited to houses. [5] [6] [7] [8] The top ten contestants in each group receive ribbons. The top three entries in each category get monetary prizes and, in some cases are awarded vacations at an Omni Hotels resort of their choice. [9]
The event started in 1992 with a small set of gingerbread houses built by people in the community to celebrate the Christmas holiday season. It was not a contest and not expected to continue the next year. As the years went by, visitors began to inquire about which entry was the winner, and the contest was born. [2] [5] Celebrity judges have included Carla Hall, Nicholas Lodge and Ashleigh Shanti. [9] [10] Judges focus on difficulty, appearance, originality, precision, consistency of theme, and creativity. [9] There are also special awards in fun categories such as Most Unique Ingredient, Best Use of Color, and Best Use of Sprinkles. [3]
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the public display portion was canceled due to social distancing guidelines, though some gingerbread creations were showcased digitally. [11] The competition was canceled in 2024, after the resort closed temporarily due to flooding in Asheville from Hurricane Helene. [12] Creations were still accepted for display but the judging and prize portion was suspended. [13]
Grover is a town in Cleveland County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 708 at the 2010 census.
The Loebner Prize was an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awarded prizes to the computer programs considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the competition was that of a standard Turing test. In each round, a human judge simultaneously held textual conversations with a computer program and a human being via computer. Based upon the responses, the judge would attempt to determine which was which.
The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, commonly called the Young Scientist Exhibition, is an Irish annual school students' science competition that has been held in the Royal Dublin Society, Dublin, Ireland, every January since the competition was founded by Tom Burke and Tony Scott in 1965.
RHS Britain in Bloom is the largest horticultural campaign in the United Kingdom. It was first held in 1963, initiated by the British Tourist Board based on the example set by Fleurissement de France, which since 1959 has promoted the annual Concours des villes et villages fleuris. It has been organised by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) since 2002.
Biltmore Estate is a historic house museum and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina, United States. The main residence, Biltmore House, is a Châteauesque-style mansion built for George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States, at 178,926 sq ft (16,622.8 m2) of floor space and 135,280 sq ft (12,568 m2) of living area. Still owned by George Vanderbilt's descendants, it remains one of the most prominent examples of Gilded Age mansions.
A gingerbread house is a novelty confectionery shaped like a building that is made of cookie dough, cut and baked into appropriate components like walls and roofing. The usual base material is crisp gingerbread, hence the name. Another type of model-making with gingerbread uses a boiled dough that can be moulded like clay to form edible statuettes or other decorations. These houses, covered with a variety of candies and icing, are popular Christmas decorations.
The Commissioner's Academic Challenge (CAC) is Florida's statewide high school quiz bowl-like academic tournament. It has been held at the Grand Floridian Resort in Walt Disney World each spring, usually in April, after 2015. Previously, it was held at the Contemporary Resort. It was cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19. In 2022 it was held at Disney's Polynesian Village Resort and in 2023 it was held at Omni Hotels & Resorts in Championsgate. Each county school board in Florida is asked to send a team composed of six high school students. Participating counties are separated into three divisions based on their full-time enrollment numbers for grades 9-12.
National History Day is a competition that educates young children in College Park, Maryland that operates an annual project-based contest for students in grades 6-12. It has affiliates in all fifty states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, South Korea, China, South Asia, and Central America. It started as a local program in Cleveland, Ohio, headed by Dr. David Van Tassel, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University. It grew from 129 students in 1974 to over 500,000 students in 48 states in 1991, and 700,000 students and 40,000 teachers in 2001. Today, more than half a million students enter through local contests. They construct entries as an individual or a group in one of five categories: documentary, exhibit board, paper, performance, or website. Students then compete in a series of regional contests with top three entries advancing to affiliate, then state contests. At state contests, the top two entries in each category and division are invited to compete at the National History Day contest. State winners then go to Maryland for a final competition, held in June for a prize of money.
The Grove Park Inn is a historic resort hotel on the western-facing slope of Sunset Mountain within the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Asheville, North Carolina. The hotel has been visited by various Presidents of the United States.
The World Architecture Festival (WAF) is a architectural and design event held annually and considered to be one of the most prestigious events dedicated to the architecture and development industries. It was founded by Paul Finch and Jeremy Melvin for the purpose of showcasing and exhibiting architectural projects and is the world’s largest annual architectural event. It is the only architecture festival that combines a live–judged awards programme, where shortlisted architects present their projects live in crit rooms to a judging panel, with seminars and networking events. One of these projects is then awarded the 'World Building of the Year' title.
The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) was a contest sponsored by Amazon.com, Penguin Group, Hewlett Packard, CreateSpace and BookSurge to publish and promote a manuscript by an unknown or unpublished author. The first award was given in 2008 and in 2015 Amazon announced that they would not be continuing the award and would instead focus on the Kindle Scout program.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee, formerly the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and often referred to as the National Spelling Bee or simply “the Spelling Bee” in the United States, is an annual spelling bee held in the United States. The bee is run on a not-for-profit basis by The E. W. Scripps Company and is held at a hotel or convention center in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area during the week following Memorial Day weekend. Since 2011, it has been held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center hotel in National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, just outside Washington D.C. It was previously held at the Grand Hyatt Washington in Washington D.C. from 1996 to 2010.
Omni Hotels & Resorts is an American privately held, international hotel company based in Dallas, Texas. The company was founded in 1958 as Dunfey Hotels, and operates 51 properties in the United States and Canada, totaling over 20,010 rooms and employing more than 23,000 people.
Biltmore Industries, Inc., also known as Biltmore Homespun Shops, is a historic industrial complex located adjacent to the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina, now known as Grovewood Village. Biltmore Industries was started by Eleanor Vance and Charlotte Yale, missionaries who moved to Asheville, NC in 1901. The complex of seven buildings were built about 1917 by Fred Loring Seely, and are constructed of hollow ceramic tile with stuccoed exterior wall surfaces. The buildings are The Eleanor Vance Building (1917), Charlotte Yale Building (1917), Carding and Spinning Building (1917), (Former) Weavers' Building (1923), Boiler House (1917), Gatehouse, and Guardhouse (1917). The complex produced high-quality crafts and fine hand-woven wool cloth. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Chef Nicholas Lodge was a pastry chef, master cake artist, author and instructor. He was the co-owner of the Atlanta-based International Sugar Art Collection, a retail gallery and school teaching all levels of cake decorating and sugar arts. He was best known for creating botanically correct gum paste flowers. Lodge was an instructor at the French Pastry School in Chicago, Illinois. He was a recurring judge on Food Network Challenge, he judged annually at the Omni Grove Park Inn National Gingerbread House Competition and other regional competitions.
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Malta originally planned to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 with the song "All of My Love" written by Bernarda Brunović, Borislav Milanov, Sebastian Arman, Dag Lundberg, Joacim Persson and Cesár Sampson. The song was performed by Destiny, who had previously represented Malta at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in the 2015 edition where she achieved first place with the song "Not My Soul". Songwriter Cesár Sampson previously represented Austria at the Eurovision Song Contest in the 2018 edition where he achieved third place with the song "Nobody but You". The Maltese entry for the 2020 contest in Rotterdam, Netherlands, was selected through the second season of the music competition X Factor Malta, organised by the Maltese broadcaster Public Broadcasting Services (PBS). The competition concluded with a final on 8 February 2020 where Destiny eventually emerged as the winner. The song Destiny would perform at the Eurovision Song Contest, "All of My Love", was internally selected and was released to the public on 9 March.
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Miss Grand Thailand 2020 was the eighth edition of the Miss Grand Thailand beauty contest, held on 19 September 2020 at Bangkok International Trade and Exhibition Centre in Bangkok, Thailand. Miss Grand Thailand 2019, Arayha Suparurk of Nakhon Phanom, crowned Patcharaporn Chantarapadit of Ranong as her successor at the end of the event.