http://www.hotelchatter.com/ Hotel Reviews, Hotel Ratings, Hotel Openings en-us Copyright 2008 - SFO Media 2012-02-14T08:09:51Z HotelChatter HotelChatter http://www.hotelchatter.com/images/hcwhite.jpg http://www.hotelchatter.com/ http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2005/12/22/17353/406 <![CDATA[<img align="right" src="http://www.hotelchatter.com/files/2474/gingerbread1b.jpg"><p> The head of housekeeping at <a href="http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/hi/1/en/hd/bgdct"><b>Holiday Inn, Bridgeport</b></a>, Debbie Tooley, has spent the past 20 Christmas seasons constructing gingerbread houses for the hotel lobby. <p> This year's house is about 4 feet tall;<br> <blockquote><p>She bakes and decorates all 400 of the gingerbread cookies herself, adorns the house with hundreds of pieces of candy and pipes icing icicles all along the structure. She even enlisted the hotel engineer, Mike Marrero, to build a collapsible plywood frame that she decorates with her special baked goods. </blockquote><p> The tradition started back in `87 when the hotel was a Hilton, and had a pastry chef. Tooly was involved, to say the least, and now replicates the design annually, with minor GEM0330 2005-12-23T09:09:28-05:00 41.178820 -73.189150 Search HotelChatter string http://www.hotelchatter.com/search/