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With its four manmade pillars and an outside porch he built himself, Henry DiPietro's Bowie home was known as the "Mansion of Yorktown." But the late Bowie man's granddaughter, Amanda, hopes a splash of holiday cheer will continue his tradition of being the neighborhood house that stands out.

After eight years of blown fuses and readjusting inflatable decorations, DiPietro, 29, took the top prize Monday night for the city of Bowie's 29th Holiday House Decorating Contest: a $125 Pirmohamed Family Award. Amanda now lives in the home her grandparents moved into more than 40 years ago.

"It brings something to this house, especially this time of year when my grandfather isn't around anymore," said Amanda, whose grandfather Henry died at 82 in December 2007.

There were three family awards, 10 Best of Bowie awards and 11 Spirit Awards given to residents Monday night at Bowie City Hall. Three families, such as the Pirmohameds, raise money to award to a contest winner every year.

Both sides of Amanda's yard were lined with orange, pink, blue and green bulbs. A Christmas nativity scene and an igloo surrounded by a seal and penguin covered in white lights flank one side of the home's walkway while the right side is reserved for the inflatable train and a once-inflated snowman that froze in the Dec. 16 snowfall in the Washington, D.C., area. An outline of Santa Claus in lights hugs the chimney, and red and green lights line the outside of the windows and garage doors.

Amanda DiPietro said Henry usually would put no more than a wreath and a few Christmas lights outside the home. She wishes her grandfather could see the home now and the award, the result of years of honing decorating skills she has had since she was a little girl, which Amanda joked, "kind of just got worse" over time.

DiPietro racked up multiple Bowie "Spirit Awards" and "Best of Bowie" awards throughout the years. She has a separate storage unit for her decorations and scours for sales at Kmart and Wal-Mart for deals after the holiday. DiPietro enlisted the help of a friend, a cousin and her 8-year-old son, Travis, to create this year's display, which they started work on the week before Thanksgiving and finished by Dec. 12.

"This is my yoga," DiPietro said. "I go out there, and any stress that I have goes away."

Teams of judges spread out across Bowie streets to evaluate each house in the contest, said Matt Corley, Bowie's special events coordinator. Corley said the decorations are never ridiculous and that the residents do an excellent job.

"A lot of these folks put a lot of time and effort and a lot of heart into what they do," Corley said. "They're not doing it for competition. They're doing it because they love the holiday season. The contest is just a byproduct of that."

DiPietro said what she looks forward to the most is the list of participating houses and addresses that she and her son ride through Bowie to view.

"I wish more people would enter the contest because I see a lot of people that don't enter and I wish they would," DiPietro said.

Returning entrant Brenda Stephens said she was going for a simple look this year as she stood inside her home, where wreaths wrapped in white lights hung from all her windows and nine wooden reindeer stood parked on her front lawn.

But the preparation was anything but simple.

"I made all of the wreaths," Stephens said. "I made all the reindeer. I made the sleigh. I didn't think I was going to be able to get everything done."

Each of Santa's nine reindeer took between an hour and an hour-and-a-half to cut using a jigsaw, Stephens said. She hand-painted each plywood creature in multiple coats of white paint. For her efforts, Stephens received the Mateik-Pitts Family Award for $100, a DVD slideshow of all the homes in the contest and a participation certificate.

Stephens, a physical education teacher at Forestville's Bishop McNamara High School, said every year something new catches her eye and she begins outlining her design plans on a sheet of paper. Last year's undertaking was wrapping the entire house in white and red Christmas lights to make it a gigantic candy cane house, she said.

"My whole attic is filled with Christmas decorations," Stephens said. "I need a shed just for that."

Stephens won a Bowie Spirit Award in 2009 and is a past recipient of the Richard "Dicky" Anderson Award, a family award that goes to the house with the highest score for a first-year contestant. This year's Anderson award winners were Fernando and Harriete Guzman.

Stephens said McNamara students who reside in Bowie are starting to learn of her passion for decorating and her home always gets shout-outs from residents passing by on foot and in vehicles.

"When I'm out there working, they'll stop and talk to me about it," Stephens said. "A lot of cars will stop at the stop sign, honk the horn and get your attention."

Less than two miles away up Route 197, three inflatable life-sized nutcrackers stood guard outside the home of Chuck and Rosemary Popelka as an inflatable reindeer in front stood on its hind legs to push Santa down a chimney to deliver gifts.

The nutcracker love fest continues inside the Popelka home, which was brimming with just as much Christmas spirit as the outside.

Multiple shelves were filled with nutcrackers, which make themselves at home for most of the year inside the Popelkas' 65 boxes of Christmas decorations. Rosemary Popelka buys a nutcracker every year for each of her two sons, ages 16 and 22, bringing the total to 38.

"That's why we bought the house," she said of the decorations. "It has two big attics. We were thinking ahead."

Chuck, 65, and Rosemary, 55, said they both come from big families where Christmas decorating was a tradition. Although they always put up decorations, it wasn't until last year when they decided to enter the contest at the suggestion of their neighbors. The Popelkas won the Richard "Dicky" Anderson Award in 2009 and won a Bowie Spirit Award on Monday for their 2010 decorations.

Rosemary Popelka said she and her husband try not to think of how much time goes into the outside decorations, which she estimates was a solid three days of assembly. The family spent the $100 they won from the Anderson award last year to buy clearance holiday decorations after Christmas, including a music box that is coordinated to play holiday songs such as "Joy to the World" to the movement of blinking white lights.

"I haven't baked a [Christmas] cookie yet," Rosemary Popelka said.

nmcgill@gazette.net