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Gingerbread bandstand rocks at Holly Hall
(by Sue Hoffman - December 16, 2009)
Gingerbread bandstand rocks at Holly Hall
By SUE HOFFMAN
A gingerbread replica of the decorated bandstand and Christmas tree in Triangle Park in Chagrin Falls is on display at Holly Hall. It is up for silent auction and will go to the highest bidder at 2 p.m. Dec. 19.
Debra Gebler, a secretary at Chagrin Falls Middle School and the district's bus garage, constructed the gingerbread bandstand. When she had it on display at the middle school office, students who walked in were awed by the aromatic and visual treat.
"Amazing" is the way seventh-graders Brett Nikiforow and Victoria Fant described Mrs. Gebler's creation.
"It's very unique," eighth-grader Alex Potter said "I don't think I've ever seen anything like it."
Nancy Haag, executive director of Your Hometown Chagrin Falls, which conducts the Holly Hall auction, had a similar reaction when she saw the creation. "It is truly spectacular," she said.
"Everything is built to scale," said Mrs. Gebler, of South Russell, who has been constructing gingerbread houses with the help of her family and friends annually for about 20 years. She and her husband, Mark, went to the park with a ladder to measure the bandstand panels, which are 11 feet tall and 5 feet wide. "I changed the feet to inches," so that the model's panels are 11-by-5 inches, she said.
The winter scene that is so well known to area residents and visitors is replicated with every detail. These include the "1877" in one of the bandstand panels, indicating the year it was built and all the other designs on the structure. There are also benches inside the bandstand and in the park and the many holiday decorations.
While most of the structure is made of gingerbread, Mrs. Gebler and her family used "shingles" of chocolate-topped cereal squares for the roof. Bows adorning the bandstand are made of fondant and the wreaths are gingerbread.
"I piped the wreaths with green icing," said Mrs. Gebler, who served as a cheerleading coach at the high school for 25 years.
She also cut out gingerbread to look like river stone for the floor of the bandstand and the walkway outside. The ground is "dirt frosting" topped with cocoa. Red fruit-rolled candy was used for the bricks leading to the bandstand, and white frosting was used for the snow.
"The boys made the people," Mrs. Gebler said, referring to her sons Scott, Brett and Zak, who are all in their 20s. They also made a model of "Jaga," their young husky. "All of the figures were made out of fondant and the bench is gingerbread," she said.
The Christmas tree in the park consists of green marshmallow candy on cone-shaped poster board. "I used darker green piping to decorate it," Mrs. Gebler said. Two yellow star-shaped gingerbread cookies, frosted together, form the top ornament.
Generally, Mrs. Gebler starts her gingerbread project the weekend after Thanksgiving. "After we start it, we watch 'Christmas Vacation' and that kicks off the holiday."
This year, she said she started even earlier, right after Halloween. "I had been thinking about doing the bandstand for about a year." The project lasted about a month. "I was still baking pieces of gingerbread while the kids were decorating it." She said she did not like the first roof on the bandstand because the pitch was wrong and did it over.
Mrs. Gebler said she believes her interest in making gingerbread houses stems from watching the alpine village her parents put under the Christmas tree when she was growing up. "I would lie there for hours watching it," she said.
As an adult, she became fascinated with decorating baked goods. She helped her sister-in-law decorate wedding cakes, and also was inspired by her mother, who "was a tremendous baker," she said.
When her boys were young, she got them involved in the project. They still are.
"I think you can excite people to do a lot of things," she said. "They watch football and come back to the table to talk about how to do the colors and the placement." Now she has someone to stay with her in the kitchen -- Scott's wife, Rachel, a teacher at Gurney Elementary School.
Each year, Mrs. Gebler said she tries something a little different. Last year, she built a house modeled after a colonial on Fairmount Boulevard in Cleveland Heights. It looked like the house in the movie "Home Alone," she said.
The family rolls with the punches. "Sometimes the houses fall down," and after a while they are discarded -- except for this year's.
In addition to the gingerbread bandstand, Mrs. Haag said Holly Hall is featuring 75 decorated table-top Christmas trees in its silent auction.
Holly Hall is located at Township Hall, 83 N. Main St. It is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends.
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