Hamptons Wins Christmas Window Competition With Gingerbread Houses
A Victorian themed gingerbread house scene has won this year’s Christmas shop window competition made by Lupe Sharpe and decorated by her colleagues at Hamptons Estate agents on Hart Street
The competition is normally organised by Carolyn Molyneux from Delegate Conference and Office services who unfortunately hasn’t been very well so the Town Council organised it this year and the Mayor, Councillor Sarah Miller judged the entries. The theme was a Victorian Christmas and the windows need to incorporate their business too.
Lupe said, “The idea came to me quickly as our businesses is houses so the obvious thing was a gingerbread house. I do a lot of baking and made it from scratch. It took the best part of two weekends. My 15 year old son helped me with the engineering so it was all to scale and fitted together. It was nice to spend some time with him doing something together, taking him away from his computer screen. That was the biggest reward. I then took it into the office and to make sure it was stable I hot glued the pieces together (normally I would use caramel) and then everyone in the office helped decorate it which was fun. It was a lovely surprise to find out that we had won. It was fun creative thing to do altogether.”
Henley Mayor, Councillor Sarah Miller said, “The theme was Victorian and they were asked to include what their business does. They’ve certainly ticked all the boxes. I didn’t realise at first that it was actually real gingerbread but I thought it was fantastic but when I heard it was real I thought it was amazing and so sweet and so much effort has gone into it. It’s a shame more businesses didn’t take part this year.”
Carina Clark, Sales Manager (pictured with the Mayor) said, “It’s the first time we’ve entered the competition and delighted to have won. We will be doing it every year from now. This year we decided to lots of different windows – we did something for Regatta, Traditional Boat Festival and other things going on in the town.”
Runner-Ups were Timber Windows on Hart Street who won last year’s competition. Lynette from Timber Windows said, “Paul and Ian did the window. I think they wanted the focus to be a boat because of Henley and they included an Elf’s door to tie in with our company. Last year, was our first year. We decided to enter because it’s fun and really Christmassy.”
In third place was the Henley Larder on Bell Street.
