There was a craze online about haunted castles made out of toilet paper tubes right before Halloween. I got carried away with the idea and I planned and prepared to do it with the kids. Well, Mommy plans it and the kids think differently.

At the beginning E. and L. were interested and helped me paint the base green (a piece of cardboard box) and the tubes black. (We used a big paper towel tube and 6 toilet paper tubes, but you can make it bigger if you use more). Between the ground floor and the 1st floor towers I cut some black cardboard piece (It came with some socks and thank goodness I save everything ’cause it’ll be good for something)

The weather was kind to us and we could sit outside to do the messy work.

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Then we needed to wait until the paint dried, so we went to have lunch and after that the girls got crazy. Therefore I needed to finish most of the castle by myself.

I drew a big door in the middle at the bottom, some windows, some bricks and a climbing rose. I cut the door and a window open so we could place led tealight in them but I’d found only pumpkin-shaped tealights which couldn’t fit in the window only through the door.

I used a hot gluegun to stick all the parts together.

Anyways, finally I added the rooftop. As I had no black cardboard the kids (who joined me towards the end) chose orange. I cut out a circle and formed a cone out of it. Then the kids placed the little fun details around and into the castle: black cats, bats, ghosts, pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns to make it even spookier.

The castle served as a great place to role-play some spooky stories with the props. Mainly Little L enjoyed and played with it in English adding more characters like skeletons and spiders.

I suppose I’ll save it for next year so we can have some more spoky fun with it.

Happy Halloween!