Simple Tips for Decorating a Gingerbread House with Kids

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This post on simple tips for decorating a gingerbread house with kids was sponsored by Stretch Island as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own. #StretchIsland #IC #ad

Oh, the holidays! It’s the time of year where we jam pack a ridiculous amount of holiday themed activities into 25-30 days. With so many family activities on our holiday agenda (check out our family Advent calendar), it’s important for me to make all of our Christmas activities as simple as possible and as budget friendly as possible.

I’m so excited to show you how I made decorating our gingerbread house into a stress free and fun family activity with these simple tips.

Simple Tips for Decorating a Gingerbread House with Kids

Use pre-built gingerbread houses

Good for you if you have the time and energy to make a gingerbread house from scratch. I don’t have that kind of time, and let’s be honest, I don’t have the skill. That’s why I’m perfectly okay with buying one pre-made.

Buy gingerbread houses on sale

It’s a week into December and I’m still finding gingerbread house kits on sale at craft and grocery stores. I guess the new trend is to decorate a gingerbread house for Halloween. No thanks. I’ll pass. But I will buy one half off and save it for Christmas!

I think I’ll even watch the after Christmas sales this year to see if I can get a couple to save for next year. We don’t end up eating the gingerbread house anyway so why not buy one half off instead of it getting wasted, right?

Use candy that you already have on hand

By candy that you already have on hand, I mean, this is a great way to use up all that leftover Halloween candy or random leftovers that you’ve had in your pantry for months. I’ve had the red candies in my pantry since the Mickey Mouse themed birthday party in May!

Use fruit strips and fruit leathers

We had a lot of fun using Stretch Island Fruit Leathers and Organic Fruit Strips as our door, window, and the sled for Mickey.

This was so much easier than using frosting!

Eat a snack while decorating

It’s a given that kids will want to eat the candy as you decorate. It’s part of the fun! However, if your kids are like mine, then too much candy and added sugar will make them wild.

That’s why I let the kids eat the Stretch Island fruit snacks while we decorated. The snacks, strips and leathers have 0g sugar, only the sugar that comes naturally from fruit puree concentrates and fruit juice concentrates. It felt good to let the kids snack on something sweet and delicious with made from 100% fruit, simple ingredients and minimal processing.

Let the kids come up with ideas for decorating

I have to admit that I have a hard time with this one! I’ve always loved creating which makes me think that next year we are going to each need our own gingerbread houses. I gave the kids suggestions and let them decide how to execute them.