Disclosure – Haribo gifted us some of the products used in this post

Decorating a gingerbread house is one of our family traditions. Over the years we’ve baked them from scratch and tried kits from every whee we can find them! There’s something lovely about filling the house with the smell of freshly baked gingerbread and the children just adore having free rein to decorate our creations however them like. So I was delighted when Haribo got in touch and gifted us a selection of products to decorate a gingerbread house and share the festive fun.

How to decorate a gingerbread house

First I made the gingerbread dough and I used one of my favourite recipes from Gingerbread Wonderland by Mimi Sinclair. I’ve used this recipe for a while because it always tastes beautiful! Although we were sent a gingerbread house cookie cutter kit I decided to make my own template, based on our last house. It was a lovely Edwardian terrace which I thought would make a great biscuit to decorate.

I printed out a photo which I enlarged, then cut out the windows and door to make a paper template. I used this to cut out my gingerbread dough, and baked a few houses, using the leftover dough to make gingerbread stars. The house smelled very festive and we all enjoyed the gingerbread stars.

When the gingerbread houses had baked and cooled, I set the children up with icing pens and all the wonderful treats sent by Haribo. They were so generous and sent us their two new frosty friends – Pip Polar Bear and Puck Penguin. Adorably packaged in cute polar bear and penguin themed gift boxes, these jelly and foam treats make the perfect stocking filler. There were also bags of Starmixmas and Giant Trees, and a Haribo hamper filled with Chamallows, Sweet & Sour Bear Buddies, Balla Stix, Dummies and Squidgy Strawbs.

The children were pretty overjoyed to see some of their favourites alongside some special festive sweets and couldn’t wait to get started. They carefully went through the different sweets, trying a lot of the festive flavours. Then they decided how they wanted to decorate their house. My children can be quite competitive and kept trying new things with the Haribo sweets.

The Balla Stix made great drain pipes and the Chamallows were cut into slices. The jelly beans were used to fill windows and create smoke coming out of the chimney. They had a great afternoon decorating their gingerbread houses with Haribo. I was only able to take a quick snap of their finished creations before they started eating them! Thankfully there were plenty of Haribo left to keep them happy and share with friends over the Christmas holidays.

Win a hamper of festive Haribo treats

I’ve teamed up with Haribo and one lucky person can win a bundle of festive Haribo treats, just like the one we received (pictured above).

The package comes wrapped in a bespoke HARIBO box and includes:

• HARIBO Pip Polar Bear Gift Box
• HARIBO Puck Penguin Gift Box
• HARIBO Starmixmas
• HARIBO Giant Trees
• HARIBO Hamper
• A gingerbread house cutter kit

To enter my giveaway you must answer the question via the Rafflecopter widget below, there are some bonus entries too. The giveaway is open to those with a UK postal address only and ends on 20th December. The winners name will appear on this post. Good luck!

Don’t forget to check out my other giveaways on my competition page.

a Rafflecopter giveaway