NEIGHBORS : Home Sweet Home : Hotel uses 550 pounds of sugar--and thousands of pounds of other ingredients--to build its 20-foot-tall gingerbread house.

So you say you’ve got a few baking ingredients just lying around the house. You say you’ve got 1,650 pounds of flour, 550 pounds of sugar, 500 pounds of shortening, 120 pounds of egg whites, 132 pounds of cookies, 300 pounds of candy and 70 gallons of molasses--not to mention six pounds of ginger--and don’t know what to do with it.

Take a tip from the Doubletree Hotel in Ventura and turn it all into a 20-foot-tall gingerbread house. For the fourth consecutive year, hotel employees will build a structurally sound, practically livable home for the holidays. An “engineering crew” began working on the building’s plywood frame earlier this week in hopes of having the project completed by Thanksgiving.

Bruce Hobbs, the hotel’s general manager, said it will take about three days to construct the frame and another three to four days to bake the gingerbread. “It’s 350 of those industrial-size cookie sheets,” he said. “Talk about smelling up the whole hotel.”

So what happens with all the ingredients when the house finally comes down after Jan. 1?: “That’s one question the kids ask: ‘When are you tearing it down and can I eat it?’ ” Hobbs said. “We just throw it away. It’s kind of hard by then, it’s not edible.”

It’s been awhile since we last checked on Ventura’s Laura Porakova. Remember her? She’s the artist who wanted to carve life-size female chess pieces out of stone.

Well, she’s got a couple of other projects going on now--an exhibit of woodcuts and etchings at the SOho bar and restaurant in Santa Barbara and a five-foot stone work of “two figures embracing.”

Porakova received a boost on this latter project when an acquaintance gave her an angle grinder for her birthday last month. There’s just one problem. She lives in a residential area and an angle grinder is not the quietest of tools.

“I’m sure the neighbors are thrilled,” Porakova said jokingly. “But I don’t use it on weekends.” She did admit that since she began using the grinder, the gardener has stopped showing up.

As for those chess pieces, she is making small-scale versions for the time being and may make the life-size version out of fiberglass instead of stone. “If I did them in stone,” she said, “nobody could move them.”

I know the seasons aren’t exactly well-defined around here, but things are getting a tad silly. Check out the comment on the receipts handed out at Hornblower’s restaurant in Ventura:

“Thank you for dining with us. Join us in welcoming spring in beautiful Ventura Harbor. . . .”

Spring? Only 41 days left until Christmas, and we’re supposed to believe it’s spring?

Last week we heard from Jerry Dunlap, Ventura College’s director of physical education and athletics. He was thrilled about the school’s acquisition of a Baldwin organ for the gym.

But that’s not the only exciting sports-related news Dunlap has received lately. He was also recently inducted into the sports Hall of Fame at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

The honor was bestowed on him in recognition of his all-around performance while in school and for his involvement in athletics and physical education since leaving the university in 1967.

Dunlap considers the induction one of the highlights of his professional life, but was somewhat surprised to have received it, as he told the audience at the induction ceremony.

“I got up and said, ‘I thought you have to die to get this award. I hope this is no indication of my health.’ ”