The first thing my husband asked when he saw my latest creation was: “Why are you making Emoji Gingerbread Houses???” I thought it was fairly obvious. Our oldest was turning eight and I had the brilliant idea that her and her friends could have a Gingerbread House Decorating Party to celebrate.
The only problem? She thought she was too old for Gingerbread House Kits and decorations.
Sigh. Have we really reached this point!?!
Emoji Birthday Party & Gingerbread House Ideas
Now our oldest loves anything arts or crafts and still wanted to make something at her birthday party. So then I had a new idea. Why not still make gingerbread houses, but find a way for them to appeal to older kids? It was then that the Emoji Gingerbread Houses were born!
Now I had mastered these little graham cracker Gingerbread Houses a little while back when I created DIY Gingerbread House Build & Decorate Kits, this is what those look like:
So that part was already taken care of. Each little graham cracker house requires three full size graham crackers. I include instructions on the printable packaging for constructing the Gingerbread Houses. Here is what they look like:
But of course, the fun part is DECORATING them! For the Emoji Gingerbread Houses, coming up with the decorations was fairly simple. Basically, anything yellow, brown and red went.
Emoji Gingerbread House Decorations
Here is some of the candy and frosting that we used:
– Spice Drops
– Skittles
– Sprees
– Sixlets
– Pull ‘n Peel Licorice
– Hershey Kisses
– Chocolate Chips
– Yellow Hard Candy
– Gummy Bears
– Mini Fudge Stripe Cookies
– Mini M&M’s
– Juicy Fruit Gum
– Pre-mixed Yellow Frosting (it didn’t cost anymore than the white frosting so I didn’t bother mixing my own!)
And then, of course, you have to have your emojis or it isn’t an Emoji Birthday Party! The ones on the left I ordered from Amazon (it is a set of 48 in two different sizes), you can find them HERE. The other set I got from Walmart (although I had to go to a few different stores to find them, and when I did they were in the baking aisle by the cake mixes). Both sets are 100% edible. If I have a choice I would use the Walmart ones again. They are a little thicker and fit the style better.
Emoji Gingerbread House Decorating Ideas
If you’re having a party or anytime actually, I would recommend that you construct the houses about six hours ahead of time so that they can set. So I built the houses and then the girls just decorated them. We found that if you try to decorate them before the frosting is set they tend to be fairly fragile.
And while these houses aren’t huge, they can still hold ALOT of candy, so don’t worry if the kids are going a little overboard! I noticed some of the girls wanted me to put on the frosting and they just added the decorations, while others wanted to do it ALL themselves.
And of course, don’t forget to make a poop emoji out of a Hershey kiss, the girls thought they were the greatest! I used the tips of chocolate chips for the dots in the eyes:
DIY Emoji Gingerbread House Build & Decorate Kit
And what is fun about this is that you can have an Emoji Gingerbread House Making Birthday Party OR you can send kits home with the kids. Then they can go home and make the mess at their house ;)
Like I mentioned before, I had previously made kits to make traditional Gingerbread Houses so it was easy to convert them to Emoji Gingerbread Houses.
Each Gingerbread House Kit includes:
– One quart size zip top bag
– One package of graham crackers (this is enough to make two houses)
– Frosting or icing (we divided up one container of icing into four baggies and tied with string)
– Candy to decorate! Really ANYTHING goes! Even stuff you have around the house like pretzels & fruit loops can work well, too.
– One or two emojis (the ones from Walmart crack easily so take extra care with them, the ones from Amazon are incredibly durable)
– One printable bag topper with instructions for building the house & decorating ideas
This is what the frosting looks like up close. We found that just regular vanilla or cream cheese frosting works great. If I had disposable piping bags like these I would have used those instead. I also purchased the pre-mixed yellow frosting that I pictured above.
You can purchase individual icing packets online, however, we were trying to keep the cost down, so we went this route.
This is what the back of the topper looks like, you can see that it includes the instructions for building the gingerbread houses and decorating ideas:
To print or save the Free Printable Emoji Gingerbread House Topper, click here:
Buying materials for your Emoji Gingerbread House Kits
What I especially appreciate about these little kits is that you can put them together for under $2 each. In our area, the cheapest place to buy the graham crackers, frosting and baggies is Aldi. I purchased most of the candy from Walmart and the dollar store. The emojis and yellow frosting came from Walmart as well, but like I mentioned above, you can also find edible emojis on Amazon HERE (package of 48).
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave it in the comments!
Our daughter had a blast making these at her Emoji Birthday Party and I hope yours do, too!
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