STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Your votes are in, and three creative gingerbread builders have won monetary donations for the nonprofits of their choice.

The winners of Sun Valley Resort’s annual Gingerbread House Contest are:

1st—Gnome Sweet Gnome, which has won a $3,000 donation from Sun Valley Company for the Wood River Land Trust.

Our Wild Backyard won second place.

2nd—Our Wild Backyard, which has won a $2,000 donation for The Sawtooth Society.

3rd—A Very Happy Unbirthday: Alice in Wonderland, which has won a $1,000 donation for The Hunger Coalition.

The Gnome Sweet Gnome featured a gingerbread cabin with shredded wheat roof and yellow Chiclets lighting the windows. It was surrounded by sugar cookie trees, toadstools and a pathway made of almond slivers. Its beneficiary preserves wildlife habitat in the Wood River Valley and provides river and flood plain restoration.

Our Wild Backyard featured a large gingerbread sockeye with a green icing face sitting in a lake made of melted hard candy. Gingerbread mountains capped with white icing, a gingerbread tree and a gingerbread cabin with a roof made of Chex completed the scene.

A Very Happy Unbirthday: Alice in Wonderland won third place.

The Sawtooth Society advocates for the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, provides paid and volunteer trail maintenance and offers wildfire information.

A Very Happy Unbirthday created by the Gumdrop Gals, featured a gingerbread house tilting on the roof of another gingerbread house. The houses were decorated with Sour Punch sticks and gumdrops, while jelly beans provided a walkway and suckers, street lamps.

This gingerbread house didn’t win, but the gingerbread cabin topped with coconut frosting did a good job of resembling the Mountain High Creamy on Ketchum’s 4th Street. And the miniature ice cream cones boasting icing that looked like Soft Serve ice cream told the story.

YMCA Kids created this gingerbread piece full of Y amenities, including a climbing wall boasting gumdrop footholds, a see-through Bonni’s Greenhouse made of pretzel sticks and  a water slide made of fruit rolls. The most important ingredient? Kids boasting M&M eyes and jelly bean feet.