Gingerbread House Decorating Party

This was my first time to host a gingerbread decorating party, so I'm sharing the things I learned along the way!  

Planning is key.

Use a hot glue gun and graham crackers.

Watch for unusual candy to buy.

Unusual things I looked for:
Heart shaped candy around Valentine's Day
Pastel candy at Eastertime
peppermint sticks
fruit slices
gumdrops
chocolate covered sunflower seeds
necco wafers
dots

Other unusual ideas:  sprinkles, cereal, necco wafers, vanilla wafers

Normal Candy Ideas:  m&ms, candy canes, hot tamales, mike & ike, starburst*, jolly ranchers, red and green candy, tootsie rolls, gumdrops, pastel mints, gum, jelly beans, red hots, caramels, licorice

*a fun tip with starburst, you can unwrap them, microwave for a few seconds and then roll them flat and cut shapes out of them.

Buy 8 inch round cake boards.

It looks nice and makes your life so much easier than trying to cut pieces of cardboard.  

A table cloth you can throw away is everything.

They are $1 at Dollar Tree and again, it makes life easier.  

Give yourself time to set up.

I didn't have a ton of time to set up.  It was a fun part for me, seeing all my planning and candy collecting come together.  It takes a while to open every candy package and to put them in containers and spread them out on the table.  I used several muffin tins.  I had saved some plastic ones that come with dinner rolls and they worked great.

Buy a few special decorations for the houses.

I came across some Christmas cake decorating decals at Michaels and they made each house really cute and elevated.  

Squeeze bottles work great.

Piping bags are a challenge to work with and especially for young kids.  I wasn't sure if the frosting would be too thick or get stuck, but we found it worked great.  The one hard part was getting the frosting into the squeeze bottle.  One big piping bag, for filling the frosting would probably be a good idea.

Make sure to take good pictures of every house as soon as it's done.

I read stories about people dropping their houses on the way to their cars.  Just have a plan that as soon as they're done, you'll take a picture.  I took a close up of each house, but I kind of wish I would have also taken one of each person holding their house.  Also in a perfect world, I would have a clean, well lit place to take the picture of each.

How cute would they look, standing in front of this for their picture!?

Ideal world - photograph each using a light box! #IYKYK

🏠😌😡💗💗💗💗💗

Play Christmas music, have a few snacks (including protein since everyone will be snacking on candy), have a batch of hot cocoa ready to go.

It's a party!  Even though everyone is pretty focused on their specific tasks, make sure everyone is having fun!  You could ask periodic Christmas trivia questions or do Christmas memory conversation starters.  You could draw names for door prizes.  

Try to enjoy it - it'll go by in a blink!

  

Gingerbread House Decorating Tips 2019

I like the creative part of making a gingerbread house every year.  Here is my 2019 house and some things that worked great for me this year.

1. I bought a pre-assembled house, that let me get right to the fun part - decorating!  Here is the kit I used this year and I got it on sale in the store.

2. I bought extra candy.
-Sour Streamers ended up being a great option, I could cut out shapes I wanted out of the long, sugared strips.
-I got really excited when I found Candy Buttons - they were the perfect colors to me

-I used Smarties as a porch and sidewalk

3. I bought cereal for the roof.  This year I used Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  And it's a bit painstaking to shingle a tiny roof, but I love the result.  It turns your Gingerbread House into a Gingerbread Cottage!

4. I worked in the living room while watching movies.  It's kind of a long process that takes a lot of concentration, but to keep it fun, I watched Christmas  movies while I worked.

5. I used fake snow as a final touch. Some years I've added snow with frosting or powdered sugar, but I had bought fake snow for another project and used it to fill in between the house and the cardboard edges of the base and dusted some over the top of the house -  it was a perfect touch.  It looks like snow and adds some sparkle.

Top Ten Tips for Making an Impressive Gingrebread House

Here is my gingerbread house from last year. 

 I made it with my sister and niece and we had a lot of fun.

This year, since I was making it by myself, I wanted to do a fancier version.  So I started searching Pinterest for ways to elevate the box kit. I started pinning the ones I loved and here is my inspiration board:

Here are my Top Ten Tips for Making an Impressive Gingerbread House:

1.       Add windows out of crushed, melted-down candy.

2.       Put a light inside the house, so light shows through the windows.

3.       Decorate the pieces when they’re flat.

4.       Use your glue gun to glue the house together.

5.       Make extra royal icing.

6.       Add “landscaping” elements.

7.       Add “structural elements.

8.       Use an unexpected roofing material.

9.       Use candy coated sunflower seeds to look like a string of lights.

10.   Make sure you have a cute cake stand to display it on and sift powdered sugar over the whole house to add snow.

#1 - First I cut holes in my pre-baked gingerbread houses for windows.  VOICE OF EXPERIENCE MOMENT - MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHERE EACH PIECE GOES BEFORE YOU CUT.  (I switched the side pieces and roof pieces and caused myself a lot of grief!)  Everything I read said to use butterscotch candy for the windows.  I found mine at Dollar Tree (they're not cool enough for Target, apparently).  Then put a bunch of candies in a Ziploc and pound them with a hammer until they're crushed down to powder.  Then on a parchment paper lined baking sheet make the shape of the windows that you just cut out, out of the crushed powder, being sure it's a bit bigger than each window, so you can glue it on from the back side.  

#2 - I found a short light strand that I wanted to use inside my house, so I cut a notch at the bottom of the back side of the house for the cord to go through.  You can see the notch I cut here.

#3 - Frost your pieces, decorate them - do all your work while they're flat.  If the frosting isn't working, you can always use your glue gun.  And then it's a good idea to let them dry and set overnight or at least a few hours.

4. When I went to assemble my house, I realized I had decorated the side pieces as the roof and vice versa.  So I had to get creative if I wanted to continue.  I found a piece of foam core board and cut it to add to the already decorated pieces to make them the right size.  Then I frosted and decorated...the pieces of cardboard!  Anyway - the hot glue gun worked amazing to glue cardboard to gingerbread and the whole house together.  

I made sure to glue the pieces together on the cute cake stand and to make sure the lights were in place when I was gluing the house together.

This is my house before I added #s 6, 7 and 9 - those steps add so much!

I used the rectangle I cut out for the window as a porch.  Also, for the doorknob, I used one of the round candies that came with the kit and used my gold leaf pen on it.

#5 - I used the Wilton royal icing recipe.  I kept half white and then mixed in green gel food coloring.  It says to add one drop at a time, but I wanted a realistic pine green, so I added a bunch of drops at a time and then mixed, to check the color.  #6 - To make the pine trees, you need ice cream cones, green icing, a star tip, coupler and bag.  I really had fun with this.

For other "landscaping" elements, I added frosting as snow, around the house and then I pressed rice krispies into frosting, as a path to the front door.

At this point it was the fun decorative/creative part, so I didn't stop and take a lot of pictures.

#7 - By "structural" elements, I mean anything that will add dimension to your house.  I used pretzels around my front windows, shutters out of fondant (that was included with my kit) for my side window, a kit cat stick window box, a pretzel rod at the peak of the roof and 4 caramels as a chimney.

#8 - For the roof, I used frosted mini wheat mini bites, which have lots of good texture and built-in snow!  Cereal is a good option; necco wafers, sticks of gum, pretzels - you could try anything!

#9 - Candy coated sunflower seeds are SO PERFECT as lights they are colorful and have a pointed end - just like real Christmas lights - make a special trip to Hobby Lobby or make a special order from Amazon - that's how much they add to your house.  

#10 - Cute cake stand and then sift powdered sugar.  My cake stand is from Target.