Gingerbread houses are such a fun way to celebrate Christmas! My Gingerbread Spice printable collection was the inspiration for this colorful little holiday get-together. 🎄🎉🍭

We’ve hosted a handful of gingerbread house decorating parties across the years, and one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that pre-built gingerbread houses will make your life – and everyone else’s – WAY, way easier! (Tip #1, btw) 😉

Tip #2 – Make Your Own Icing

I bought the pre-built gingerbread houses for this party at Target. They came with a tube of icing, but we opted to make our own homemade gingerbread house icing instead.

The homemade icing tasted a lot better AND made it possible for the girls to be as generous as they wanted with the frosting. (We made a LOT!) 😋

I scooped the icing into pastry bags and cinched off the top with a pastry bag tie to keep the icing from leaking out. You can also use rubber bands to cinch the bags as a backup, but pastry bag ties work best in my experience!

Tip #3 – Organized Place Settings

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Make sure each guest has what they need by arranging it at their place setting. We had the following:

• Gingerbread house – on a cardboard base
• Pastry bag – with homemade icing
• Disposable plate – for stray candies and icing
• Napkin – for the mess!
• Place Card – from my Gingerbread Spice theme

Tip #4 – Decorations & Labels

It’s important to make the gingerbread house decorations easy for guests to access while they work. I like to line everything down the center of a long table and bookend the far sides of the table with the same treats on both sides.

For this party, I also placed some of the more unique & limited candies in the center of the table and highlighted them with fun labels from my Gingerbread Spice printable collection.

You can also use labels to give treats playful names that match the theme! In this case, candy canes became “North Poles” and coconut flakes became “Snow”.

Tip #5 – Lots of Decorating Time

The older my girls get, the longer they seem to spend on their gingerbread creations. So take your guests’ ages into consideration and then build in a little more time for decorating than you might think you need!

I was really surprised at how intricate these houses were, with patterned rooftops and “icicles” and creative doorways!

Tip #6 – Plan Fun Breaks

As kind of an add-on to Tip #5… it’s also a good idea to build in fun breaks! The girls took breaks from decorating their houses twice at this party and enjoyed some silly photo prop time and a hot cocoa station, too. 🎉

These festive hats were all from Target as well. We’ve gotten so much use out of all of them… but the turkey with Santa mittens seems to be the favorite! 😂🍗🎅

Tip #7 – Photo Keepsakes

After all this creative work, there should definitely be some long-lasting evidence. 😍 (Something that lives on long after the houses are eaten, at least!)

I took photos of each gingerbread house with the artist’s place card next to it and texted it to their moms. It’s fun to look back on these photos and remember what everyone designed! 😍

Hope these tips help with your next gingerbread house decorating party!!

P.S. The cute polar bear marshmallows pictured above are something I stumbled on at Marshall’s. I had them on the hot cocoa bar charcuterie board for this party, and a couple of the girls brought them over to add to their gingerbread house, too. 🐻‍❄️ 🥰 🎄