A Very Merry Christmas!

I love Christmas. I love the lights, decorations, festivities, spirit, parties and present. But most of all, I love the food. I jumped at the chance to attend a gingerbread house decorating party. Interactive, crafty, festive and food related...it really doesn't get more Christmassy than this. 

The hosts built small "gingerbread" houses using graham crackers and royal icing ahead of time. Tables were lined with all sorts of gingerbread home decor -- marshmallows, coconut, cereal, candy canes, M&Ms, Nerds, sprinkles, chocolate chips, gum drops, licorice, etc etc. Party goers grabbed a house and a spot at the table and went to work. 

I went for a peppermint winder wonderland, using coconut for a snow effect and then grabbed anything red and/or white and went to town.

  

My friend Liz had some issues when half of her roof fell off. We slopped some royal icing on that thing, stuck the roof back in place, and were good to go. 

She ended up with what we called "the gingerbread funhouse", complete with a real gingerbread reindeer on the side. 

I took a walk around the room to check out the other creations. I really the unintentional icing effect the dripping royal icing had on this house. 

And I'll admit, I stole the idea of the candy cane heart from this house.

This larger house was dubbed "the log cabin".

And I loved this little snowman with his reese's cup hat.

Mid-way through my house construction, I looked around the room to see about two dozen grown adults completely focused on decorating little graham cracker houses. I do believe this was the very definition of good clean fun. Well, maybe not so clean...I'll bet the hostesses are still finding royal icing all over their house.