byronreese
Kids haunted gingerbread houses
Kids love gingerbread houses, but they’ll love making haunted one even more!
By Angela McKendree
Gingerbread houses are fun Christmas time crafts but most parents and kids probably never thought of gingerbread houses as a Halloween craft, too! If your kids can’t get enough of gingerbread houses during the Christmas season, consider making them an October tradition as well.
Material:
Small milk carton (the kind kids get with their lunches)
Graham crackers
Vanilla frosting or confectioner’s sugar and water, a mixing bowl and spoon
Candy corns
Ghost “Peeps”
Black licorice
Mini Hershey chocolate bars
Small candy corn pumpkins
Cardboard base
How to: step by step instructions
1) Clean out the milk carton so that there won’t be a sour milk smell coming from the gingerbread house
2) Make the icing if you are not using store bought icing by mixing together the confectioner’s sugar and water until it is a pasty consistency. The paste should not be too runny or else it will not hold the house together
3) Put a dab of the icing about the size of a half dollar on the center of your cardboard base. Set the milk carton down on top of the dollop of icing and hold it down firmly for about thirty seconds until the icing dries a little.
4) Begin constructing the house by “pasting” the graham crackers on to the sides of the milk carton. The graham cracker squares should be “pasted” with icing to the sides of the carton. To make the crackers into squares, they will probably need to be broken in half. Break the crackers according to the dimensions of your house. This may take a little bit of rough measuring by placing the graham cracker on its side against the carton. No rulers or tape measures are necessary.
5) Graham cracker rectangles will act as part of the roof. Turn them on their side and “paste” them horizontally on top of the graham cracker squares. The rectangles should lean in toward each other to form a pointy roof.
6) Then take a graham cracker square and cut it in half diagonally to form two triangles out of the one square. The triangles will be the last element of the roof. Glue it to the front and back on the roof of the house.
7) Spread or pour the icing onto the roof. Then use the candy corns as shingles for the roof, placing them in neat little rows on both sides of the rectangle graham cracker part of the roof.
8) Use the mini Hershey chocolate bars to make a front door. Paste it on with the icing “glue.” The chocolate bars can also be used to make windows by pasting them over graham cracker squares that are acting as the sides of the house.
9) The black licorice can fill in the seams of the house. This will look a little bit like piping. They also make excellent bare trees. You can “glue” a licorice stick cut in half vertically onto the cardboard base. Peel off little strings of licorice and let them stick out to look like bare branches.
10) Paste the ghost “Peeps” all over the yard to make the house look haunted.
11) Paste the candy corn mini pumpkins outside the front of the house for decoration.
Doesn’t it look good enough to eat?
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