Gingerbread home decorating is one of our favorite Christmas traditions. Our favorite part of the event is the variety of sweets on display, as well as the creative designs created by children and adults alike. We’ve hosted quite a few gingerbread house parties, and we’d want to share some of our best ideas and methods with you. Get a head start on your holiday celebrations this year with a free printable gingerbread house party kit you can print at home.
In a gingerbread home party, it is not just for children. Adult, couples, or girls-night-in-Christmas-party-themed Christmas parties can be made more festive by hosting a gingerbread house-making event! Adults and children alike enjoy being inventive. Gingerbread houses have been decorated by our small family alone on occasion. Other years, we’ve thrown a kid’s party with a large number of tiny pals in attendance. Creating gingerbread houses as a friendly competition between couples is one of our favorite family activities. What a great time it is to witness all of the different and unique gingerbread house ideas!
To save time, we usually buy pre-assembled gingerbread house kits or use graham crackers to build quick and easy homemade versions, but this year we decided to go all out and make our own gingerbread houses. When we discovered how simple these were to produce, we couldn’t believe it! We can’t wait to make this a regular Christmas tradition after having so much fun this year baking our own houses.
We prefer store-bought or graham cracker houses if we don’t have the time to construct gingerbread houses from scratch. If you’re creating houses with a large number of children, we recommend putting the houses together ahead of time so that the children can concentrate on decorating. Make or assemble them the night before so that they are dry and robust enough to handle. Trying to help a bunch of tiny kids erect their houses and having them come apart while they’re decorating it is the most frustrating thing you can do. Homemade royal icing is superior to store-bought icing as a binding agent.
For gingerbread houses, you can never have too many candy and sprinkle options. We like to provide a variety of toppers and sprinkles so that customers can customize their cupcakes to their heart’s content. Invite your guests to contribute sweets in the form of one or two bags each. It’s fun to open them all up and place them in small dishes or cups with lids (the kind for toddler snacks or condiments is our favorite). For this year’s holiday décor, we divided them up by color. Set up a fun toppings station by printing off our free sign.
Our go-to candy list for gingerbread houses:
1.mini m&m’s
2.mike and ike candy
3.good and plenty candy
4.jolly ranchers – for stained glass windows and ponds
5.gumdrops and/or dots candy
6.mini starbursts
7.pretzels – mini sticks, tiny twists, snaps
8.chocolate chips
9.candy melts
10.mini marshmallows
11.nerds, nerds gummy clusters
12.lots of sprinkle varieties – colorful sugar, dragees, nonpareils, jimmies
13.candy canes
14.waffle cones – for trees
15.chocolate candy rocks
16.mystery object guests have to use – this is a fun twist if you’re doing a gingerbread house competition
While visitors are decorating their gingerbread houses, we like to provide them with a festive beverage and a sweet treat to munch on. Take advantage of our free drink and water bottle labels by downloading them now. For your gingerbread home party, we also offer complementary cupcake toppers and treat tags.
