Hello! It's time once again to reveal this week's finalists in our Christmas Countdown Challenge.
Reminder: This is no inconsequential contest - $700 in prizes are at stake! Thank you again to our sponsors Designer Stencils, Fancy Flours, and Karen's Cookies for making this contest possible. If you haven't yet entered (or earned a finalist spot), there's still time to do so for Weeks 3 and 4 of this contest. For the contest guidelines and submission deadlines, click here. Also, important to know: finalists are determined by the trending calculator on the site, which factors in the recent rate of accumulation of likes, comments, and views. In short, the finalists are those cookies that members, by virtue of their actions, deemed hottest* in the week prior to this announcement. It is not total number of likes that determines these spots. For more information about this selection process, click here. (Please also note that while people can continue to like and comment on Week 2 cookies after this finalist announcement - and rankings may change - the finalists indicated in this Saturday Spotlight will remain the finalists going into the final voting round starting on December 28. Once finalists are named, they are the finalists throughout the duration of the contest.)
Enough said . . . without further ado, ta da!
And, now in larger format so you can fully appreciate all the wonderful details:
Day 8: A Snowy Village by Kimberlie
Day 9: 3-D Christmas Tree by Tina at Sugar Wishes
Day 10: Polar Bear by Gwen's Kitchen Creations
Day 11: A Tweet Holiday by Sugar Pearls Cakes and Bakes
Day 12: Bird On A Branch by Gwen's Kitchen Creations [EDITOR'S NOTE: It's worth pointing out that Gwen has made a cookie for each of the 25 days in this contest! You can see all of them - her very own advent calendar - here. Wow!]
Day 13: Elegant Christmas by Katia at GK Cookies
Day 14: Gingerbread House by Classic Cookies by Parr
Congrats to all of this week's finalists! What a terrific representation of the holiday season!
* Again, a word about how the rankings are determined: The rankings are not at all subjective. In fact, they are determined essentially by you, our members, and the activity (number of views, likes, and comments) you've bestowed on each photo. The site uses a top-secret algorithm that weighs these various factors to determine which photos are trending most quickly (i.e., are the "hottest") over specified periods of time. As such, the hot list at the time of this announcement may look a little different a few hours or a day from now as more photos are added to the site.
So that no one has an unfair advantage in making it onto a hot list, the algorithm is secret even to site administrators. Only our platform developers know the code, which has been exhaustively tested by those developers and Cookie Connection staff.
All photos shown here are the courtesy (and copyright) of the designers listed.
To check out our other hot lists, at any time of day, visit our Hot Spot, also found in the site's main navigation line.
Comments (8)