Pumpkin Carving 101

Yesterday, we decided to carve our pumpkins. These are the ones that we dilligently and lovingly picked out a couple of weeks ago at the pumpkin patch. For the past 2 years, we have not carved pumpkins; we have painted them. I couldn't remember why we chose to paint instead, so I told the children that this year we would be traditional! Scot went out and bought a pumpkin carving kit and the children carefully looked at each picture in the book to decide what they wanted to carve. It turned out that Brady and Christian were going to share a pumpkin and Leah and I would carve the other one. Scot was just going to be floater and help out wherever he was needed. Brady and Christian picked out the picture of the haunted house. Leah picked out a picture of the spider web and spider. I looked at these pictures and thought, "Hmm... that looks a little complicated...." but then I decided "Why not? It'll be fun." (Just so you know: anytime you think that as a parent, you are in for a bad time...)

So we started. Here are our pumpkins....

Scot started on his pumpkin first. I think mine senses that the end is coming and is scared and trying to escape.

The children were all excited at first. Scot cut the top off and began to remove the "guts". I'm not sure if he should have described them as guts because the children immediately became squeamish.

Brady refused to put his hand in the pumpkin at all; but Christian gave it a try. Once. And that was it. He then stated that he had to go wash his hands. (This is the child that I have to BEG to wash his hands normally). Scot pretty much had to remove the rest.

Then we were on the patterns. I sat down and began to trace the spider web. It was here that I began to get a clue. A clue that this was not going to go well. My pumpkin was thick and hard and that spider web was complex. There's a reason that the traditional pumpkin face consists of triangles and straight lines, people... and it's because you can't make a curved line on a big, thick pumpkin wall no matter what trendy little tools are at your disposal. Scot was helping the boys with their house and started to trace his pattern. He took the pattern off his pumpkin and looked at basically what consisted of a bunch of holes. I started to work on the spider web. I decided to take some creative liberty with my design (looking back, that was probably not the best idea). The boys began to argue. My hand started to cramp. It was here that Leah stabbed me with a pumpkin tool and I began to bleed. Wait, wasn't this supposed to be fun?

Scot decided to intervene and turned Brady and Christian's pumpkin around and began to carve what he deemed a "goblin face" (i.e. the traditional triangle face- no fair! I was too far along to do that!). It turned out pretty good.

I had gotten through the web, although I'd been told it really didn't look like a web, and moved on to the spider. I contemplated having a 6 legged spider. After all, it was Halloween and that spider could have met up with some sort of tragedy. I decided to do all 8 legs, but the spider looks like he met up with some sort of radioactive material. I declined to take a picture. It's one of those pumpkins that you have to stare at for a while and everyone seems to see something different. I could blame my helper...

In summary, I now remember why we have painted pumpkins for the last 2 years. And I believe that we'll be painting them again next year.