Tuesday, December 11, 2012

A Gingerbread Party


E turned 5 this past week! She told us she wanted a "friend" party for the first time this year. Somehow (still not sure how!), I was able to distract her from the purple/pink/princess theme that seems to surface in every area of her life. Thus, the idea for a holiday themed gingerbread party was slowly unearthed.


Making gingerbread houses from scratch for 10+ kids may seem like a crazy idea, but you don't know my Mom (aka Nana). She's a wiz at baking and happened to be in town last week. I designed a template, cut it out of a used cereal box, and she took it from there. Once the pieces were baked, we all chipped in to put the miniature houses together. I love how (most of them) turned out!!


The decor was a bit more simple than my usual pile-it-on style of planning parties, but things seemed just about right. A few red paper fans, a stitched garland, and candy-cane striped paper to cover the table. Miniature bottle brush trees and jars of candy served as centerpieces. I also put a few of the trees into glass bowls with fake snow and glitter.


Each child was given a house and a bowl full of icing. The kids had fun dipping the various candy into the icing and then sticking it to their houses. We definitely learned a lesson about hard candy not sticking very well to gingerbread-oops!


We also played "hot potato" with a Christmas ornament/Christmas music, pin the nose on the reindeer (remember this fawn from here?), and had a marshmallow toss. We ended everything with cake, of course!


Happy Birthday Ellie! We love you so much!

2 comments:

  1. Randi, this party is perfect! My cousin's birthday is a week before Christmas and her mom always threw a gingerbread house decorating party for her and I looked forward to it every year. It looks like your daughter and her friends made wonderful memories!

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  2. i mean.. you make this look so easy! but seriously, this looks like that most fun birthday party idea i've been in a while- so creative and totally different and your decorations for the party theme are the icing on the cake.. i mean gingerbread house:)
    looks like it was a blast!
    xo-the lane

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