Cardboard Castle

Trunk-or-Treat happened to fall on the day of our birthday girl this year. She wanted a birthday party and the other three wanted to go to trunk-or-treat. As you often do with a family of six, we compromised and decided to host a trunk that was birthday-girl themed. She was already heavily into princess-mode for her costume so the trunk plans quickly became a birthday castle.

We needed materials that were temporary, easy to move, and not too expensive since it was likely to be a one-use castle. We had just moved so we had a LOT of boxes. Cardboard castle, here we come!

Supplies:

• Cardboard boxes
• Heavy duty scissors
• Box cutter
• Paint (You could also just let the kids draw on the boxes with markers, crayons, or whatever you have on hand)
• 1×4 board to hold up door streamers (You could use cardboard for this, or a wooden dowel. We often use what we already have so use your imagination.)
• Door streamers
• Stickers
• Stuffed animals or characters for the windows

The plan was to have the castle extend out from the minivan so trick-or-treaters would walk into the castle to get their candy. In the picture below, imagine the fireplace is the open back of the minivan.

We headed to Home Depot and got lucky with some pink and purple oops paint. If you haven’t heard of this, it’s returned paint from either a mistake or someone buying too much for their project. It’s a lot less expensive if you can find the color you want.

I kept the boxes separate so they would be easier to transport. My painting crew went to work and we were on our way!

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Once the boxes were painted, and we put it all together, the painters decided they wanted to add more detail. They added vines and flowers with some extra white paint we had in the garage. They also found a few heart and butterfly stickers. Then we cut a 1×4 board and secured it through holes in each tower so we had a place to hang our streamers. I figured this might also be helpful to stabilize the castle in case of a windy evening.

The name sign is a painted cardboard oval and letters with purple tape wrapped around them.

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I wish I had gotten more pictures to show how it attached to our van. We ran the painted cardboard walls up to the back of the open minivan. In the background, you can see a few extra painted cardboard towers that we set on top of the liftgate and that became the roof.

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Here are our trick-or-treaters before the event began. The princess wasn’t even in costume yet.

Then our dinosaur met another dinosaur at the party!

It’s always nice to meet a same-species friend at a party.