Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Gingerbread Houses!!

It's funny how Christmas traditions start....for years a close friend hosted a Gingerbread House party.  

You brought the candy and she provided the houses.

The last year she hosted she built over 300 Gingerbread Houses!  Can you believe it? It was an open house that started at 10am and went until 5pm.  

A few years ago Maria asked me if I would mind hosting.....I said of course not, but on a much smaller scale.


Every year Maria drops off the molds, she has 3 of them...so you get a house and a half out of each oven session. As you can see the molds have a lot love on them!

This past Friday I made 17 gingerbread houses in anticipation of children coming over to decorate on Sunday.


We had 14 attend this year.....and we made 3 kits to take to kids who almost gave up a trip to Disneyland just to decorate Gingerbread Houses! How crazy is that!!


Hunter and Jax, the two youngest decorators this year, hard at work making the perfect house!


Rebecca and Dan just starting...these two put in some long hours decorating their houses,
but
Erin, daughter number 3 on the left, and Natalie won the most hours put in contest! These two worked through two Bing Crosby movies....White Christmas and Holiday Inn, and The Santa Clause Movie with Tim Allen before they were done!


Hosting the Gingerbread House party is one thing that will always be on my list of have to do's!

I love building them and I especially love how excited the kids, young and old get, when decorating!

chris


15 comments:

  1. What a wonderful tradition! The details are fantastic. Everyone did such a good job. Josie's 2nd grade class will be making miniature ones next Monday.

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  2. What a neat tradition! Such a wonderful job!

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  3. What fun!! I have actually never built one, but just might have to one day!! xo Heather

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  4. How fun is that! I love how those turned out. Now I wonder just how much candy gets eaten while the houses are getting decorated - LOL.

    xo Danielle

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  5. Awesome gingerbread houses! My grandgirl decorated one last week from a kit! Not quite the same! It's a nice tradition.
    Warmly,
    deb

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  6. we used to make our own patterns each year for houses, a post office, a barn, a church. Love the form to bake the house with, brilliant!!

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  7. What a fun idea and great tradition! Your girls houses are fantastic. Good for them working through 3 movies. Love this post!

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  8. Great tradition! I have done them a few times when the kids were little...such memories of roofs with crazy amounts of frosting and lots of candies consumed!

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  9. Those look really nice. A lot of care went into making those gingerbread houses. What a fun tradition.

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  10. Goodness, what a great party, I have never heard of that! The girls houses are adorable...And you get hostess of the year award for baking 17 houses! I am over the top impressed!

    Carol

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  11. Well, now I feel like a loser for buying a kit from the store! LOL
    Your home made and OOAK ones are so much better! What a wonderful thing to offer your friends and family Chris!
    Erica :)

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  12. ps...I can't even imagine how great your house smelled! People could probably smell it when they drove by! lol :)

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  13. I love those little houses! My Niece and her family have a Gingerbread House decorating contest:) SO much fun! Enjoy your day dear friend, HUGS!

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  14. What a fun party idea! I love gingerbread houses! So glad you had all this fun.
    Merry Christmas!

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  15. Oh how fun! I know everybody enjoyed themselves so much, and those houses turned out great! laurie

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