Not your typical Gingerbread house (Cardboard Box fun)

This week while getting ready for Christmas munchkin kept asking to make a gingerbread house. Well he doesn't like gingerbread or much of any candy really (except chocolate) and I didn't want to make one and then have it be wasted so I decided to think of a way to have him get his house without the waste. That's when I saw what we had at home to use and it came out great!

Materials:

• 2 Cardboard boxes (I used pull up boxes)
• glue/glue stick (glue stick works best)
• heavy duty tape
• multi colored paper
• scissors
• ruler
• Christmas coloring books
• plain white paper
• colors/markers/color pencils

Instructions:

1. Take your boxes and cut them at every major crease
2. Look at all your pieces of cardboard and imagine the size you want to achieve for your house. I personally wanted it big and didn't want to have to measure too much so I kept the sizes pretty as is long wise.
3. I then measured the main piece that would become my front of house with a ruler long wise so as to find the center point. Then I decided how tall I wanted it so i could make my border for the roof edges.  I used the center point to make the lines for cutting the triangular shape out evenly. Then cut it out according to the lines.
4.  I then got the 2nd piece of cardboard and traced the first front piece onto that piece, cut it out and that became the back of the house.
5. For the 2 sides of the house I measured the height of the corner before the roof starts on the front piece and made the 2 side pieces into rectangles to match the houses height.
6. I then used the heavy duty masking tape to tape  all 4 pieces together on the inside. I then traced along the edges of the bottom floor of the house on to a piece of cardboard  and cut it out and taped it onto the rest of the structure making it the floor base.
7. I measured with a ruler the length across from the back of the house to the front of the house where the gap for a roof was and cut a rectangle to to cover the left and then another to cover the right and made sure that when held together they closed up as a roof evenly. Then it was taped in place.
8. The rest of this is now mainly aesthetic. my box looked pretty good because I kept the cardboard pieces design on the inside of the structure as well as most of the tape. You can decorate it as you wish with various Christmas odds and ends that you may have had as leftovers from wrapping and decorating.
9. I used colored paper to make roof shingles that I saw here in a cute pattern. I cut them out and me and munchkin put them on the roof with a glue stick. I then used a solid color to cover the tip of the house so as to hide the cardboard.
10. For all 4 sides of the house I used white paper trimmed to size to cover the cardboard and give it a more clean look (glue stick works best).
11. Finally I made details such as windows and doors.
12. The last and the funnest part you can do with kids of any age is coloring! Grab some Christmas coloring books and color fun stuff. I found various coloring pages of candies, presents and Christmas trees and more to color with my munchkin. I then cut them out and glued some on as scenery's around the house. I then kept some just for the use of fun! I put a piece of not so sticky double sided tape on the back of Santa and other Christmas items such as gingerbread men so that he could just put them on and off of the house on various scenes. It was too cute and he loved it!

Keep in mind that you can make your house into any theme you want. One for Easter with a bunny and eggs to hide all over or a haunted house for Halloween. *future craft idea*

Happy Crafting & Happy Holidays from my family to yours!

My inspiration came from Say Yes To Hoboken.