It’s official. I have roped Stephanie from The Daily Blarg into sharing her Halloween gingerbread (graham cracker) house tutorial with us.
Steph claims not to be “creative,” but I don’t believe it for a second. She’s always whipping up something fun for her family and her stories make me laugh ’til I cry. She is an incredible social media specialist and a great friend. I am excited to have her posting today.
I am the first to admit that I have less creativity in my entire body than most of you have in your right pinkie toe… It’s true.
But, I do adore Halloween. And even more than Halloween? I love having fun and creating projects for kids. They never judge the fact that I am terrible with a glue gun and get glitter in my hair (even I judge myself for that).
Several years ago I was thinking “Self… why do we only do gingerbread (or in our case graham cracker) cottages at Christmas time?” From my schizophrenia, Haunted Halloween Castles were created.
I would consider this to be more of a guide to creating these castles with your kiddies versus a tutorial… I just read about 20 tutorials in the last hour to prepare for this post and realized I am ill equipped to tell anyone how to do anything… I mean besides finding unicorns.
Supplies:
- Halloween platter (from a dollar store)
- Hot glue Gun
- 5 whole graham crackers
- Frosting
- Halloween colored and shaped candies
- Halloween stickers and plastic toys
Because I make this with young children I have come up with a few tips and tricks over the years to make the task much easier.
Instead of having the children use the frosting to stick the graham crackers together I pre-assemble the castles using hot glue. I also use the hot glue to secure the castle in place on the platter.
Since this is a Halloween project I went for a tall “tower” like effect with the graham crackers.
As you can see it looks a little messy but it holds together nicely when the kids start applying the frosting and other decorations.
For the roof, I typically break a graham cracker in half and create an a-frame securing it on with the hot glue.
Now here is the fun part…Let the kids loose with all the fun goodies. It doesn’t need to be pretty or fancy… The only rule is that they make it SPOOKTACULAR and nothing says scary like skeletons, spiders, bones and bugs galore.
Depending on the child (or in this case a 30 something year old woman) the haunted castle should turn out looking something like this.
And from above… just for fun.
Thanks for humoring me and my fun little project.
Stephanie Hansen left the corporate world 4.5 years ago to focus on her true love, chauffeuring, also known as, raising two teenagers. Her spare time is spent reading, cooking, eating, blogging, tweeting, watching trashy reality TV, and cuddling up in her Snuggie while wearing a BumpIt.Steph recently launched a social media company focused on helping small businesses connect and build relationships via Twitter and Facebook. If you happen to look at Stephanie’s over 45,000 tweets you might say she knows a thing or 12 about that.Stephanie is not creative, doesn’t like chocolate, but makes up for that in the amount of Diet Coke she consumes. Oh…she is married to her main Asian squeeze and has a Papillon named Hoffy.
Blog: http://www.thedailyblarg.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thedailyblarg
Twitter: @sahans
Steph @ The Daily Blarg
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I love you Steph! And I love your Halloween house. We do always make them for Christmas. I think a Halloween round is in order. And PS…..your pics look better than all of mine do…..so……do you wanna do my tutorials in the future?
Ellie G recently posted..Operation Swap a Smile-A GREAT Cause
Lara, Steph’s photos are awesome, right? I was super impressed. Of course, I also enjoyed the ease of her little houses. I think I am going to try to make them with the kids next week…
xoxo
Tauni
Fabulous idea! Of course, Steph is fabulous so all her ideas are fabulous. It just works out that way.
Emily recently posted..Mad Libs Monday: “Little Red Riding Hood” by Kim of Mommycosm
Emily, I couldn’t agree more! Steph is AMAZING (and quite “crafty” too).
xoxo