Have you decorated some Gingerbread Houses this Holiday season? How cute is this GINGERBREAD HOUSE DECORATING PARTY submitted by Nicole Wills of Tradewind Tiaras, Inc. A Christmas party doesn’t get much better than this. Who doesn’t love getting together with family & friends to decorate gingerbread houses? So fun, and YUMMY. Now, at these parties, we have a truly obscene amount of candy. And as much of the icing gets squirted directly into little mouths as makes it on the houses. No real need for a dessert table, and we mostly focus on serving savory foods as an antidote to the sugar overload. But I came up with a really fun idea this year–no dessert table, true, but the backdrops to the food and beverage tables WERE a dessert display! I’ve always had a soft spot for folk art paintings, and decided that I wanted my table backdrops to be reminiscent of a winter country scene in that style of art. I created layered, somewhat 3-dimensional hills out of Styrofoam sheets, and created all of my buildings and trees out of sugar cookies on sticks. All the buildings, trees, sleighs, snowmen, and Santas you see are cookies pops! I hung red curtains (from our living room–I love recycling elements in new ways) on either side of the backdrop both to cover raw edges and make it look like we were gazing on a wintery country scene outside a window (much more festive and seasonal than the view of our 70 degree Phoenix backyard). The beverage station was a ton of fun. I made homemade hot cocoa and mulled cider, and had Styrofoam hot beverage cups (with lids! Lots of kids!) with custom homemade cup cozies that matched the party decor (a take-home favor). The beverage table also held my favorite part of the party. I came up with the idea of what I call “Mixie Sticks.” They look like that old candy favorite, Pixie Stix, but they’re actually flavor add-ins to mix in your cocoa. I made cinnamon, mint, and espresso mix-ins for the cocoa. Kids and adults alike had so much fun customizing their cocoa flavors, and one little girl reported that the cinnamon was excellent in the mulled cider, too!

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