Are you beginning to feel festive yet? I, completely unashamedly, am! And last week I hosted an early Christmas gingerbread decorating party with three of my best friends to get us into the spirit. It was such a fun evening and a huge thank you to Hobbycraft for being the experts in all things Christmas crafting/baking.

First up, I made the gingerbread the night before to give it a chance to chill overnight. I used this recipe which tasted delicious and made SO much dough to bake with. In fact, we only actually used 2/3 of this for the amount of cookies baked, we still have some left in the fridge so this would be a perfect amount for your party.

I ordered everything from Hobbycraft for the night. They have the best selection of cutters like this reindeer, which was my ultimate favourite. This bauble  and a beautiful snowflake.

I chilled the dough overnight and then rolled it out to a thickness of around a pound coin. I baked these in the day to save time that evening, for the party I just wanted us to focus on decorating rather than worrying about the time they'd take to bake in the oven and cool. So it's perfect to get ahead.

I also used this cute pack of Christmas biscuit cutters which pretty much had one of everything that you'd want for Christmas biscuits. And how cool is this sheet cutter tray where you could literally place it over the dough and roll on top of?

I had a production line going of putting the cut out shapes into the oven, cutting more whilst they were cooking and then transferring them once baked onto a cooling rack before repeating the whole thing. I love baking, at Christmas in particular and the house smelt so festive.

The options for decorating with Hobbycraft are endless. A few things that I ordered for the evening;

Biscuit & cake letter stamps

Edible food icing pens

A decorating brush set

An icing colour kit  {although in the end we decided to keep them white}

This tub of white royal icing that we watered down slightly to fill the piping bags, it was amazing and I will never make my own icing again!

Professional, disposable piping bags

Edible glitter - a must!

Metal piping tips for the bags

I wanted to make the table all Christmassy too so used these fab fillable crackers which you can decorate and fill yourself.

They're such a great idea to use as table place names for whatever theme you're going with.

Online here. And then some red ribbon and cute twine . I filled these with a little chocolate in each, they already come with jokes and hats. 

I decorated the table with this jute runner and then put up some fan decorations {the great thing about Hobbycraft is that everything is so much cheaper than buying from dedicated party shops}

I set out all of the biscuits ready for our icing party.

Christmas candles and songs compulsory.

After we had dinner, and pulled our crackers, we got to the fun part!

We filled each of the piping bags and then had the different nozzles and brushes depending on the thickness of icing we wanted for each cookie.

After busy work days for everyone, this was the ultimate soothing {as Amy my friend put it} activity! And so fun to do as a group pre-Christmas.

So much love for these girls.

You can go as crazy, icing wise, as you like. You could flood the whole cookie with icing and then go over the top with detailing but we really liked the plain gingerbread background which makes the white stand out even more. And is very Scandi!

These reindeer were definitely the favourite of the night, especially as we gave them a festive red ribbon scarf.

We found it handy to have racks, or boards, where you could put the finished cookies when done.

Sparkly glitter optional!

Sharing a million photos because they were all so cute.

The cutest reindeer cookie that I ever did see.

The finished collection. I adore these photos of them all together, each of them so different but them all working as a big display.

When you look at them, they're so simple and you don't need fine icing skills yet they still look so festive and smart.

Which one is your favourite? They tasted even better than they looked!

To pack them up as gifts, I used these clear bags and then tied them up with the twine in packs of three. 

They'd make such cute little gifts, or even table favours for a Christmas dinner. 

You could also make little holes in each of the cookies before baking so that you could hang them on your tree as decorations, or make a hole and fill them with boiled sweets that would melt and create a window effect for sparkly tree lights to shine through. There are so many options for decorating and icing too but the main thing is to just get everybody round for a fun evening together. 

You can find everything you need for Christmas crafting and baking online here.

Would you host a gingerbread party? I think it's come over from America, like most cool things I guess, but I think it will become a tradition for us for sure.

R <3 xx 

{This is a sponsored post with Hobbycraft and all items were gifted as part of the campaign but as always, I only ever work with brands that I truly love and all opinions are 100% my own}