The Lee Family: Gingerbread Decorating Party

Yesterday we hosted a gingerbread people decorating party at our house in the morning. In past years I've taken the girls to the Gaylord Texan to decorate the gingerbread family and meet "Gingy" but last year it was so expensive and didn't seem worth doing this year. Instead, we decided to host our own and invite friends over. On Saturday I made two batches of gingerbread dough and then spent Sunday rolled out the dough and baked several batches of gingerbread men, women, children, snowflakes and Christmas trees. The two batches actually made a lot more than I expected but they all turned out great. Yesterday morning before everyone arrived, I made two batches of royal icing and put them into quart-sized ziploc bags so each kid would have their own portion. Since there were little ones like Hannah and Olivia, I also had store-bought cookie frosting that they could use since it's a lot easier to use than royal icing. While I made the icing, Sofia did a great job separating the candies into several different bowls so that each area of kids could reach candy to decorate their cookies.

Sofia decided to invite all of her core group of friends as well as friends from school. The group included Thomas, Giovanna, Vincent, Shivani, Emma, Allen, Hannah, and Kelley. Isabella, Nicole and Milani were all out of town. It was a great group and as soon as everyone arrived they all headed upstairs to play for a bit. Finally after about 30 minutes we called the kids downstairs to get some food before starting the cookie decorating. The kids were able to chose from ham cubes, cheese, pretzels, carrots, green snap peas, crackers and juice boxes. After the kids ate, I passed out the cookies and the kids got started.

Kelley really took her cookie decorating seriously and spent a lot of time on each cookie. Everyone had a great time decorating and thankfully Casey, Allen and Hannah's mom helped Olivia and Hannah work on their cookies at the "little kid table." I'm pretty sure Olivia ate nearly all of her candy and frosting rather than decorate her gingerbread cookie. She first had a bite of gingerbread cookie on Sunday when I was baking and wasn't completely sure what she thought. She ended up taking two bites but didn't really want more. Meanwhile, Sofia loves gingerbread cookies and could eat them all day long!

All the kids decorated several cookies before they were done and decided to head up to Sofia's room to play instead. Kelley actually stayed behind and continued to decorate cookies and all of us moms decided to take a turn at decorating cookies, which was really fun. After a bit longer, everyone headed home with their cookies and a few took home extra cookies, frosting and candies, since we had a lot of everything left over. Shivani ended up staying until 2pm when Pritha planned to pick her up. Sofia and Shivani play so well together and get along so well and Shivani is incredibly inclusive and kind to Olivia, so I called to ask if she could stay longer. Instead, Pritha asked if Sofia could go with Shivani to the movies and watch Night at the Museum 3. She went and had a great time and really loved the movie! So, that evening we rented the first Night at the Museum and watched it after Olivia went to bed. The movie is really a lot of fun and I'd forgotten how good it is. It's so fun now that Sofia is at an age where she enjoys such fun movies! It was really a fun day and hope that we can host another gingerbread cookie decorating party again next year!

Setting up the tables for the kids to decorate cookies