Gingerbread houses are traditionally associated with Christmas, but why stick to the status quo when you could explore new do-it-yourself (DIY) possibilities? Wielding two bags of sugar cookie mix and a jar of dark chocolate frosting, I attempted to create a “haunted” gingerbread house worthy of at least a couple ghouls to roam its rooms.

The cookie recipe was a simple one—just a stick of softened butter and two eggs (plus the mix itself). I cut out rectangles for the walls and triangles for the roof. The dough was sticky and difficult to wrestle onto the spatula, warping the lovely edges I had so painstakingly outlined. Once the baked cookies cooled, they were brittle and difficult to cut without snapping, so shaping them while still hot was critical.

But, as I soon found out, baking and cutting the cookies was the easy part. In my impatience, I didn’t let the cookies cool and immediately went to work gluing them together with orange frosting. One of the walls began cracking before I had even finished attaching all of them together, and my endeavors to mend the bend with frosting were futile. Pro tip: shaving off parts of your cookies to fit each other is a lifesaver.

Not even four minutes after I lifted the chocolate-covered roof onto the base, the building collapsed into a sugary mess. Final verdict? Don’t attempt this DIY if you don’t want to witness three hours of your life fall apart right in front of you.