Haunted Graham Cracker Houses

Haunted graham cracker houses are one of my favorite little projects to do with the kids this time of year. They are similar to the gingerbread houses we do at Christmastime, but made with chocolate graham crackers and decorated with Halloween candy! We have been making them every year since our oldest two were around two and three years old. They are really easy and so much fun to make!

The kids love them because they can decorate them however they would like...while sampling the ingredients as they go, of course.


We started doing these before the days of Pinterest, which is probably a really good thing for me. Only because I would want to try to recreate things which would likely fail. Have you seen those elaborate, gorgeous gingerbread haunted mansions? Yeah. That's not what we're doing here. At all.




This is one of the first projects I worked on with the kids that I learned is a lot more fun when I stop trying to micromanage. I help them get their basic structure together but then I let them go crazy.

I always love seeing what their imaginations dream up. Black licorice trees, orange gumball pumpkins, marshmallow ghosts, candy corn fences, Oreo gravestones and graham cracker crumb dirt.





I like to have everything set out so they can see what they have and so they can reach it all easily. This year, we invited friends to join us so I made sure to set up ingredients on each side of the table. It's not a bad idea to have a plastic tablecloth down for this one. Trust me. It is also really helpful, if you have more than one kiddo working on these at a time, to be sure they each have their own piping bag (or plastic baggie) of royal icing. This way, you won't hear "May I have the icing now" which quickly turns into "Hey! I need the icing! Gimme that!" around here.

I put together a list of materials/ingredients we have used in the past that work well but the great thing is that you can use just about anything to make your very own...

Haunted Graham Cracker Houses

-Chocolate Graham Crackers (walls/roof)
-Sugar Cones (roof)
-Graham Cracker Crumbs (dirt)
-Royal Icing (the "glue" to hold everything)
-Candy Corn (fence)
-Marshmallows (ghosts)
-Orange Gumballs (pumpkins)
-Reese's Pieces (house decor)
-Oreo Cookies, halved (gravestones)
-Black Licorice Twizzlers (trees)
-Rolos
-Hot tamales
-Gummy worms/bears
-Mini chocolate chips
-Halloween sprinkles

When they started they were taking their time, working very carefully on their little houses. After weighing them down with pounds of candy, and globs of thick icing their houses were definitely looking a bit more, um...dilapidated than when they started...definitely spooky!

After they finished their houses, we headed outside to run around and burn off some sugar while the icing set. When we came back inside, the boys did another quick Fall/Halloween project I had set up.

I keep seeing these cute little paper towel roll bats pop up on my Pinterest feed. They look simple enough so I gathered up the materials and let them get to work. We glued black construction paper around a section of a paper towel roll first. Then we cut wings, fangs and eyes from foam paper and glued those on. That was it! We forgot to fold the ears in at the top before the picture, but they were having too much fun flying them all around the house!

We were so happy to have our friends with us for this little project this year. I hope it's something all of the kids will remember and want to do every year!

xoxo