One of my favorite holiday traditions is my annual gingerbread house decorating party. I make the houses and my friends bring the candy and icing for the decorating. We spend the afternoon talking, eating too much candy and decorating houses - peeking at each other's ideas along the way.
About two weeks before the party I bake the gingerbread house pieces. The weekend prior to the party I assemble the houses. The houses are made from a cookie cutter kit available at MagicCabin.com. The kit includes cookie cutters, directions, and recipes for the gingerbread and icing used to glue all the pieces together. I find making the houses in an assembly line fashion much quicker than making each house individually. For the base, I head to the dollar store and purchase small pizza pans which can be reused each year.
Below is a picture of the houses all assembled and waiting to be decorated. A little gingerbread house village. They are not perfect but once the houses are covered in candy, no one will notice!
As everyone arrives, they put the candy they have purchased in the middle of the kitchen island. As you can see there was no shortage of candy here. To attach the candy, we use store bought icing. 
Almost done.
And here are the finished houses. Even though we all started out with the same basic house each one turned out a little different. Each one as pretty as the next.
When it is time to go, all the houses are wrapped with cellophane and tied with a white ribbon. 
The big question at the end of the day is always "when are you going to eat it?" Most of my friends leave their houses wrapped until Christmas day. A fun family tradition my friends have started as a result of this party. Since I don't end up wrapping mine, it usually only lasts a few days before pieces of candy begin to go missing from my house. I will give you one guess as to who is the first to take a piece!
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