Haunted Halloween Houses

We have a tradition at our house that we love. We have done it off and on for many years, but we have done it every year for the past 10 years. We make a Halloween house. Think gingerbread house for Halloween. We make it out of graham crackers so we can make the tallest, spookiest looking house. We have got together with friends many of the years, but not this year. Kids, schedules, work and holidays don't make it easy to have a day that works for many people. So my daughter and I put together our house for this year. Like I said graham crackers and hot glue until you get something that you like.

We have made these for years so we kind of have an idea of what to do to so it turns out according to our idea. Most years our houses are pretty similar, but never exactly the same. Since it's a Halloween house you want it to look run down and haunted. So perfect lines and perfectly broken crackers are not needed. In fact the more mismatched it looks the better.

Then comes the fun part. Almost - you still need frosting to put everything on with. You can use any frosting recipe. You just need to make sure that it is a firm frosting or it won't stay in place. I actually use my frosting recipe that I use for my actual gingerbread house at Christmas. It turns rock hard when it dries. 

Royal Icing

3 egg whites

1/2 tsp cream of tarter

1 lb powdered sugar

Mix for seven minutes. This frosting does start to harden up so don't make it until you are ready to use it. 

When it was done I split it between 4 bowls and using food coloring I made the orange, green, purple and black/dark gray frosting. You have to be careful to not make the colors look pastel. That's not Halloween, that's Easter. My orange looked too pastel so I added a few more drops of red and that deepened the color. For the black/gray frosting I used black food coloring gel that comes in a small container. You can't make a true black frosting from white frosting, but you can get it a very dark gray that is close enough. (You have to start with chocolate frosting to get an actual black.) I put each frosting color into a Ziplock quart size freezer bag. You have to use the freezer bag, regular bags will often break at the seams leaving either you or your house with a large blob of icing. Then I cut a small corner off of each bag.

Then we put out all of our candy onto small plates so we were ready to go. Anything fall or Halloween colors works. We had gumdrops, candy pumpkins, Peeps, M&M's, chocolate chips and orange white chocolate chips, gummy Halloween shapes, and more.

One of the things that we have started using a lot of over the past few years is sprinkles. I'm not talking little ones, I'm talking the ones that are larger and are hard like a jaw breaker. They have awesome Halloween ones - pumpkins, ghosts, bats, eyes, bugs, skulls, bones, and more.They are awesome to decorate with, but not so much to eat.

They eyeball in the middle and the skulls and bones at the top and around the windows are sprinkles. Have fun decorating. Anything goes. Since it's Halloween it really does become fun because you don't need to worry about patterns or making things match.

Don't forget to decorate the yard! That's where your creativity really comes in. Notice the coffin with a skeleton inside it and the bug and spider walk way on the picture at the beginning of this blog.

Have fun. Let your kids help. Let them put on the icing and whatever candy they want. This is the perfect way to have fun with them and let them learn a new skill or better a skill. That way when it is time to decorate the one at Christmas that you want looking nice and pretty they will be better prepared to help. So much fun! I love Halloween time!