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!