Sunday was probably one of the best days ever! McKinley hosted his very first holiday party for five of his friend and it consisted of holiday cookie decorating. I asked McKinley weeks ago what type of cookies he wanted to decorate and he immediately answered with gingerbread houses. As most of you know, if you read the previous posts, I wasn't going to make gingerbread houses or buy them. I ended up using the super helpful instructions found on Pinterest for building houses out of graham crackers.
My mom and I had purchased all the necessary items a couple of weeks ago and got to work on Friday of last week. It took us a couple of hours, and a bottle of champagne later, to complete the project and they were so cute! We used sugar cones for the trees and I ended up going back over them with green icing late Saturday night. It was totally worth the extra effort too. They were darling! But back to the graham crackers. My mom was responsible for cutting out the houses and I made up a batch of royal icing and worked to glue all of the houses together. Awesome team work!
Saturday I spent most of the morning setting up the table. I purchased a throw away table cloth at the Dollar Tree so that I just had to scoop everything up at the end of the day and pitch it! Best $1 spent! With only six kids decorating, the table spacing was so easy. Three on each side with all of the candy between them.
The candy toppings were a huge mix of things. Starlight mints in red and green, mini M&Ms in the same colors, sugared drops, and mini Starburst dots. The kids also used the chocolate chips and mini marshmallows from the hot cocoa bar.
For the final set up, once the trees were all green, I added a cute pair of moose antlers to every kids station. I mean, who doesn't need antlers while decorating cookies!
And then it was time for the kids to arrive! Here's how it played out.
I'm honestly not sure who had more fun! I know the kids did, but I did too. It was so much fun watching them create their own houses and then decorate gingerbread men. And I loved that moms stayed to help the kids as we rang in the holidays together. It was just a wonderful afternoon.
If you have the time, and energy, this is definitely a party to add to your holiday list for next year. I promise, you won't care how much time it took to prep. Every minute is totally worth it.
XO,
Andrea
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