I’ve always wanted to host a gingerbread house decorating party, especially since becoming a mom. This is a great party idea for young kids, but also a solid adult party idea.

Decorating gingerbread is something I love dearly and can spend hours doing. In this post, I will share how I decorated for my party, tips for building gingerbread houses faster, and treats to serve at your party.

This post is sponsored by Spoonflower and the table linens and napkins you see are custom made from their site. I love Spoonflower’s assortment of unique prints created by independent artists.

Related recipes to serve: Gingerbread Cookies, Puppy Chow Mix, Christmas Cupcakes and a Hot Chocolate Bar

Setting up a gingerbread house table:

1. Set a table with a pre-built gingerbread house for each guest. Leave the houses undecorated or very lightly decorated so they can do the rest.
2. Provide an assortment of beautiful icings and candies to decorate the houses with.
3. Speed tip! I built six gingerbread houses in about an hour using my secret ingredient … hot glue! Understandably, this will be controversial. If you want your house to be genuinely 100% edible, you should not use hot glue.

For my family, I know from years of experience that there’s no chance we are going to try to dissemble and eat this house. I am comfortable making it not edible.

I know we will make several batches of soft, fresh gingerbread cookies and we can consider these houses a craft and decoration.

Decorating ideas:

Set the scene for your party with cute and joyful decorations. I pulled out dozens of bottle brush trees, lit some candles, and pulled out all my new cloth napkins and tablecloths from Spoonflower.

They have over one million designs to choose from! I had so much fun choosing an assortment of cute and classic prints.

Cloth Napkin Designs: Cowboy Santas / Pink Gingerbread Men / Snowman Faces / Pink and Brown Plaid / Gingerbread Cookies / Brown Plaid / Candy Cane Stripe

Tablecloth Designs: Round Green Stripe / Rectangle Green Stripe

Tips for Gingerbread Houses:

• Pull inspiration images from Pinterest.
• Sort candies and sprinkles into muffin tins so everyone can reach for what they need.
• Play a Christmas classics playlist or a holiday movie in the background.
• For grownups present, make a batch of our mulled wine.
• For children, serve sparkling juices in fancy glasses.

More decor ideas:

• Make paper chains. It adds to the whimsy and nostalgia of the party.
• Decorate with gingerbread men and gingerbread house themes.
• When in doubt, always add more paper snowflakes.

How to create a hot chocolate bar:

I recently published a whole blog post on this subject, but in short you will want to create a tray with everything you need to make hot chocolate.

And not just any hot chocolate—you will want to make it extra with items like candy canes, sprinkles, shaped marshmallows, and flavored whipped cream. Go all out!

Thank you so much for reading. You can shop all of the featured collections on Spoonflower. If you have any questions, we’d love to chat with you in the comments. The best part is this could be the beginning of a tradition you can enjoy with friends and family for years to come! xx- Elsie