This past weekend Tom and I took the boys to the local civic center to make Scary Cottages. We did this last year too and the boys enjoyed it so much we signed up for it again.
When you arrive you have half a table reserved for your family and you sign up in advance for how many cottages you want to decorate. Since the boys are still so small one cottage is plenty for us to decorate. Each boy does half of it with help from mom and dad and it works out just fine. Once you find your table you have a cottage made out of cardboard and you are given two containers of chocolate frosting, all kinds of candy and some halloween decorations to decorate your scary cottage. Of course the boys had to sample the candy first!
The boys dug right in with the icing. Since the chocolate icing was pretty thick they took duct tape and taped two popsicle sticks together for added strength so that it was easier to ice the house without the stick breaking. The favorite part for the boys to decorate first is the roof probably because the roof is the easiet part for them to reach.
Mom and Dad enjoy making the Scary Cottage too so we decorated what we could. Once the boys were done and went to play with the other kids at some of the other activities that were set up, Mom and Dad were able to do a bit more decorating too! This year they gave each family some spanish moss to use as grass around the cottage so we added some of that when we were all done and it really tied the whole thing together. They gave us green cotton to use in the chimney so that it looked like smoke. Since so much of the decorations were edible we had to make sure that the boys understood that the cotton for the chimney smoke was actually cotton and not cotton candy!
In the end I think that we had a great Scary Cottage. However, I am having some doubts as to whether or not the Scary Cottage will make it to Halloween. Almost every time that the boys go into the kitchen and see it sitting on the table they try to take a little piece of candy off of it. By Halloween there may be nothing left!
