This is such a neat idea, and the execution is gorgeous. It’s a customized advent calendar by aptly-named Etsy shop Halloween Advent House: Each window and door opens to reveal a different spooky drawing, and the whole thing lights up at night (there are additional photos on Etsy). The house includes a plexiglass “sky” featuring a full moon and a custom message. It is a work of art.

The single sticking point is that it’s $1795US, which puts it beyond the budget of many a Halloween addict. Darn it, it’s always something.

If you’re feeling ambitious, it might be possible to DIY something similar using a wooden dollhouse kit; it’d still be fairly expensive–suitably large kits run close to $200–but the cost would be a little easier to bear and you could decorate it however you fancied.

There are dozens of kits available; some that aren’t outrageously expensive and seem to have a sufficient number of windows/doors include Greenleaf’s Beacon Hill and Pierce models, Real Good Toys’ Bostonian and Newport, Superior’s Queen Anne, and (my favorite) Laser Design’s Leon Gothic.

Since the dollhouses have more depth, you could put actual miniature monsters behind the doors and windows rather than artwork (or print designs of your choice on thin acetate and glue them in place). There are plenty of Halloween-themed miniature decorations for dollhouses, so once you’re finished with the interior you could expand your house’s grounds with a family graveyard and spooky trees. (Now that I think about it, an advent graveyard would be kind of cute too; assign a number to each tombstone and open a different grave each day.)

It’s certainly an elaborate project, but it would be a fun family activity to build your own haunted dollhouse and then use it every October to count down the days to Halloween.

(via Spooky Moon)