Haunted Gingerbread Houses - from scratch

Ok, so I didn't make the candy myself, but I did make the gingerbread dough, cut everything out for two houses, and baked all the pieces taking a grand 9 hours - good thing I started on Monday. (Let's just say that the houses were much bigger than I thought they'd be - so we had to buy more icing and candy) On the first Saturday in October the women of the family get together and decorate these crazy things while the men head off to the Priesthood Session of General Conference. The little kids all get graham cracker houses that Grandma puts together. We don't use icing to hold the houses together thanks to our first terrible experience. Now we just use a non-stick pan and melt brown sugar but it's definitely not something the little ones can do on their own. Anyway, back to decorating. This year I got the icing ready and handed it off to my little ones. They both went right to work and both did an incredible job all on their own. I was so impressed and relieved.

My little girl wore one of Daddy's old shirts so that she could keep her own clean.

My little boy LOVES the green icing. He spent half the time decorating and half the time eating candy. I'm glad he finished first so that he could play and burn off some of that sugar!

Here is my roof. I envisioned this the second I saw the mini gumdrops.

My daughter's house. We made the spiderwebs the day before on wax paper.
All 3 of our creations:
She was so excited to have 2 ghost peeps
Her pumpkin patch, tombstones, and cool house. She loved the bone sprinkles her Aunt let her have.

My son's house ~ I just love that he did all of this on his own~

I made the windows separate and added crushed red jolly ranchers and tossed them in the oven. Then we use the melted brown sugar to stick it all together.

This is the side with the broken and glued windows. ughhh But I guess it just adds to the haunted broken down feel.

I figured I'd line the path with sideways candy corns - like a fence that fell over. Then I added the m&m's (thanks for those Grandma) and purple sprinkles.

I filled up my yard with a pumpkin patch and brown and green shredded coconut.

He was drooling over my house when I put on the carpet for photos.

I did agree that it would be okay to eat one of them. My daughter volunteered hers.

Here are my cool broken windows. I don't recommend it. It goes much quicker if they are one piece and you can easily add in the hard candy to melt.

It was so enjoyable and I am grateful for this tradition. It's the one I really get into. I'm not much into wearing costumes and such although I try to get the kids something fun each year. I'll be posting some fall photos again soon. We've really had a lot of fun scouting for places this. I finally took my own photos. Usually it's kind of a Tyler thing, and although I LOVE his photos I felt like there was something missing. The details of course. I'll post more soon!