Graham Cracker Gingerbread House Family Party

How to make graham cracker gingerbread houses. And how to host a gingerbread house-making party with tips and ideas to pull off this fun Christmas tradition!

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This post is sponsored by Honey Maid Graham Crackers. But our longstanding tradition of love of graham cracker gingerbread house-making parties is our own!

One of our favorite holiday traditions comes from the Whiting side of the family. Each year, we meet together for a Graham cracker “gingerbread” house decorating party. It’s a fun take on traditional gingerbread houses, but without the days and hours of baking and prep to bake gingerbread.
This is a winter holiday tradition we love as a date night for two, but we love it even more as a family party or a group date!

Holiday houses party making your own gingerbread houses out of graham crackers.

When everyone comes together, creativity seems to blossom! And who doesn’t love an activity that younger kids and elderly grandparents alike can all enjoy together? And when you use Honey Maid Graham Crackers as the base for your holiday house, it makes putting this party together such a breeze!

Graham Cracker House Supply List

Here’s what you’ll need to create your own gingerbread house out of graham crackers:

Christmas houses party making your own gingerbread houses out of graham crackers.

Honey Maid Graham Crackers

I’d plan on at least one box for every two people at your party. You may want extra if you have extra creative or construction engineers in the family like I do! Plus, Honey Maid makes the most delicious graham crackers, and you may find both the children and the adults eating a few samples while they build.
They are a great price at Walmart, and it’s easy to stock up for a big group!

Frosting

We love to get a large amount and fill half a sandwich bag per person. It tends to be just about the perfect amount. Plus, you can cut a small hole in a corner and be set for decorating with ease! I’d plan to include a plastic serrated knife for each participant so they can easily spread the frosting.

Also, Wilton makes a fantastic frosting that you can buy in-store! It’s a great way to make the party setup even easier. But feel free to use a recipe with an egg-white base for a harder set-up. Royal icing also works well if you’re feeling ambitious.

Hot Glue Gun

Shh, it’s almost a secret, but one you need to know! Many people glue the foundation of their graham cracker gingerbread house to the foil board using hot glue. It’s clearly not food safe if you do this, so use your judgment accordingly if anyone is going to eat the house.
But we’ve found hot gluing the base of the home to the bottom so the foundation sets, making for a more solid structure and fun decorating experiences with less frustration. We typically only pick the candy off the top of the roof, so we’ve had zero problem using hot glue on the bottom and frosting everywhere else.

Follow your heart, it will let you know if hot glue is a good choice for you and your gingerbread house-making party.

Candy

Be sure to grab some holiday candy like peppermints and candy canes for those who love a traditional holiday house. We’ve also learned Sour Patch Kids are a crowd favorite: people love adding personality and characters to their gingerbread creations. Gummy bears, cinnamon beras, gum drops, red hots, are all favorite decorating candies I’d try to include!

Here’s our big secret to making candy options fun and creative: this is what we do with leftover Halloween candy! A few surprise items in different shapes and sizes lend to a lot of creativity!

Decorating Items

We love to add in a few bonus items that aren’t candy to help decorate. Get some round or square crackers or crackers scraps to help create paths and roof shingles. Holiday-shaped pretzels that come in trees and snowflakes are always fun. And it’s hard to go wrong with sprinkles or dyed sugar to add some extra sparkle and fun.

Cardboard Wrapped in Tin Foil

We’ve tried paper plates, and they aren’t quite the same as recycling a cardboard box into tiny trays and wrapping them in tin foil. The steady structure makes them very easy to take home. The flat surface helps the Honey Maid Graham Crackers set up a strong foundation.
Graham cracker gingerbread ideas seem to flourish when there’s a little extra building space on a flat surface. Plus, it’s fun to have a yard those die-hard graham cracker gingerbread house creators who like to go all out!

Graham cracker gingerbread house making party tips.

That’s all you really need, but some napkins and wet wipes can help with messes. We’re also huge fans of bowls/cups to organize candy and make it easier to decorate. We also like using tablecloths that are easy to clean or dispose of for quick cleanup after!
We’d also highly recommend a holiday playlist with your favorite songs to set the mood for the party.

How to make a gingerbread house with graham crackers

This is the fun part! There isn’t a perfect answer; you can get so creative with your house! But if you want a classic-looking house, it only takes eight graham crackers to build the base of the house. Use frosting and put together a square structure.

Holiday houses party creating gingerbread houses out of graham crackers.

From there, you can choose to do a flat roof for easy decorating or a pitched roof. The easiest way to do a pitched roof is to layer two Graham crackers together with about an inch overlapping. They will look like shingles on the roof. You can also create a triangle shape with frosting to fit two sides of your square, and wait for the frosting to dry and harden. From there, it’s easy to make a pitched roof!

Why we love this holiday tradition

This is one of the easiest ways to create some fun family time during the holiday season!

How to make Graham cracker gingerbread houses.

It is so fun to see how creative some family members are! I loved seeing my land acquisition manager brother-in-law make a state-of-the-art midcentury modern holiday house! My construction management brother-in-law built his graham cracker gingerbread home with perfect shingles (thank you Sour Patch kids) and a design we all agreed we’d like to move into.

My mom’s Spanish-style home won the most creative. One year, Jacob and I turned our home into a castle. We used graham crackers and licorice rope to build a working drawbridge. Being married to an engineer is so fun at these creative moments!

It only takes about an hour to two hours, but there are always loads of laughs. It’s always a family favorite, and it creates an easy family tradition we all look forward to each year!