Gingerbread House Decorating Party with Hot Cocoa Bar

Photography by:
Amber Partish of Parrish Studios
http://www.parrish-studios.com

We hosted a gingerbread house party for my children, their cousins, and their friends. We setup our decorating table with mini Gingerbread houses filled with candy of all sorts and kinds. Each place setting had a printout of our shop’s gingerbread house – that acted as a placemat/charger for the adorable gingerbread plates from Oriental Trading Company. Beside each setting we placed cute gable boxes – also from Oriental Trading Company. We scattered some bottle brush trees that we had found at our local Dollar General Store. We placed a cute centerpiece of a girl and boy gingerbread plush figures along with gingerbread rolling pins and measuring cups. I had these in my inventory from several years ago from Oriental Trading Company.
We placed a sweets table on one side of the decorating table for the kids to have goodies while they decorated their houses. For the backer for our sweets table, I re-purposed an old cardboard box by applying “frosted” (glittered) shingles made from tan paper and trimmed to fit as shingles on the roof. I then added a trimmed piece of poster board that was made to look like sugar snow covering on the roof, and I added some of our shop’s larger gumdrop graphics to complete the roof look. I printed out a window graphic for the top portion of the house and a door graphic for the bottom. I then re-purposed some old ball pit balls and cut them in half and hot glue them on all over the backer to look like candy pieces for the house. At the bottom, I hot glued on different peppermint, candy, lollipop, and candy cane graphics I had made. I also attached some candy cane ornaments from the Dollar Tree, and I made some other peppermint pieces by wrapping some of my handmade peppermint paper fans in cellophane to look like wrapped candies. And I stuck a lollipop stick onto a few of my lollipop graphics and put a little bow on the bottom of the graphic to look like lollipop candies.
The table itself held decorations of wooden peppermint candlestick decorations and some glittered tree mini standee decorations, both from Oriental Trading. There was also a Gingerbread wire tiered platter that I put into my serving inventory several years ago – from Oriental Trading.
On our sweets table, we served Little Debbie snack trees that we placed on decorative Christmas straws to make “pops” out of them. We also dipped mint Oreos and sprinkled them with crushed soft peppermints and placed those on lollipop sticks. We had dipped rice Krispy treats that we embellished with some gingerbread icing decorations from Michaels and placed straws in those as well, to make pops out of them. Atop the Krispy straws, we placed some of our gingerbread house graphic toppers from our shop. Our table also served spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, wrapped and topped with our shop’s gingerbread man wraps and face toppers. We also decorated a few with some handmade paper fans from our shops Christmas pattern papers and embellished them with some of our gingerbread man graphics. We also topped a few with another set of gingerbread matching themed graphic toppers from our shop. Our ruffled white background was decorated with a few of our larger handmade paper fans and gingerbread men graphics as well. And the front of the sweets table was draped with some of our Christmas paper circles and Gingerbread Man face circles as a mini banner. Many of our food items were tagged with our gingerbread themed food labels.
Off to the side of our decorating table, we had another ruffled background that acted as a separator for our party room. On that separator, we placed a Peppermint “Merry Christmas” banner that is also from our shop’s Gingerbread collection.
And gracing the other side of the decorating table was our Hot Cocoa Bar. We set up our toppings portion of the bar area atop an old chest. We placed a chalk board as the backer and strung our shop’s “Baby It’s Cold Outside” mini pennant banner across it. We then placed all our Hot Cocoa fixings across the chest: Nestle’s and International Delight’s holiday flavored creamers, and then several toppings in mini containers from the Dollar Tree – peppermints, peppermint sticks, chocolate chips, marshmallows, sea salt, marshmallow bits. We also placed bottles of caramel syrup, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, larger marshmallows, and gingerbread marshmallows. And there were shakers of cinnamon and nutmeg. We placed a few of our handmade peppermint paper fans around the setting.
Off to the right of the toppings bar, we had our coffee and cocoa center. Here we placed our Keurig atop a sled for ease of hot water dispensing. We also had a container of dark hot cocoa and milk hot cocoa. We also filled a glass bowl with coffees and cider pods for those who wanted something hot but a little different than cocoa. We placed a cup full of decorative Christmas straws for “stir sticks”. And we also placed a glittered tree decoration from Oriental Trading. And the front of the table was draped with our shop’s gingerbread themed pennants. We tied some of our shop’s “Cup of Good Cheer” tags to our small foam cups. We received this idea from Lisa Frank Parties – an idea she had shared a few years ago on Pinterest. Many of our items on the hot cocoa and coffee center, plus the hot cocoa toppings bar, had our shop’s peppermint food labels displayed as well.
And finally, off to the left side of the Hot Cocoa toppings bar, we had a milk beverage cart. Here we served cold beverages of plain and chocolate milk. We had our plastic beverage bottles wrapped with our shop’s gingerbread bottle wraps and the straws gracing the bottles were topped with our gingerbread mean bow tie toppers. We placed some peppermint tall glasses on the bottom of the cart for display purposes. These glasses were from Oriental Trading from last season.
Because of the time constraints of the party, we went with using graham crackers to build our faux gingerbread houses. The kids had a wonderful time and we look forward to hosting another decorating party again – it was so much fun!

Many of the paper good items are from our shop and are available as digital downloads for you to purchase and print and craft at home. We do offer physical tangible products as well, for additional pricing.
Most of the additional décor was found either a few years ago (and placed in inventory) or recently from Oriental Trading Company. A few of the containers were purchased from Dollar Tree. And the bottle brush trees were from Dollar General.
The sweets were either all store-bought treats, such as Little Debbies, or they were homemade by Water Walker Event (we do not offer treat making services). The backdrop was handmade by Water Walker Events, along with the paper fans and all the printables – barring the gable boxes and plates – which were from Oriental Trading. The hot cocoa mixes were homemade mixes we made in larger batches.
Thanks for reading!
Shawna
Water Walker Events

• What People Ate

  Our sweets table consisted of Little Debbie Tree snack pops, Krispy Treat Pops, Spiced Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, Dipped Peppermint Oreos, and of course, Gingerbread house candy toppings and icing!

• What People Drank

  We served a hot cocoa bar with toppings and also coffee and cider. We also served cold beverages of Plain and Chocolate Milk.