Toddler Haunted House

Here's another thing we did a couple of years ago at our first Halloween party we had for my daughter and her friends/cousins. It was a big hit for the toddlers. I originally saw the idea for this on another blog, but we totally made this our own.

To make this you would need:
- a big box
- paint
- pencil
- black Sharpie
- purple Halloween lights
- ice pick or something to poke holes into a box with
- hanging Halloween decorations
- do not enter tape and rats, optional

We first had to search for the perfect box, like refrigerator size kind of a box. We found a good one and then we painted it. We ended up getting a box from a family friend who worked at a store and it was a box that wet wipes had been delivered in to the store. So the box said "wet ones" on each side in big black letters which was a little hard to cover completely, so I'd recommend getting a plain box if you have that option.

As for the actual painting of the box I wanted it to look like the front of a haunted house on the side of a box. I first took a pencil and drew where I wanted the doors and windows and things to be, and then I used gray paint to paint the whole side of that box except the spots that I had drawn for other things to go. Then I used yellow paint to paint the windows completely and after that dried I went back with the gray again and painted the window panes and used white paint for ghosts in the windows. I painted the door red, and used some bright orange paint to paint pumpkins by the door and green paint for the stems. I of course painted the tree brown. Once all that paint was dry on the box I used a black Sharpie to add details like bats, spider webs, etc. Plus some more gray paint for the hole in the tree.

I will also add that with being a parent to a toddler I wasn't able to paint this box all at once, especially since parts had to dry before other parts could be done. Don't wait until the last minute to do something like this, I had to do it in several spurts.

Other details I put were "do not enter" Halloween tape and then sat some plastic rats from Dollar Tree by it.

After all the painting was completed I poked holes into the top of the box with an ice pick and then stuck purple Halloween lights into the holes.

I also put some scary skeleton and vampire things I purchased at Dollar Tree and Party City that had strings to hang them from dangling down from the top of the box. I stuck the strings through holes that I had put in the box and then taped them to the top.

My daughter loved crawling through it again and again and she wasn't even two yet. I've posted before about how I think most Halloween decorations are perfectly okay for kids even when they are young and they won't be afraid if you don't make it scary. We make Halloween very fun and my daughter has always loved to pick out spooky decorations because she knows it's all fake.