Pumpkin Carving and Decorating

These are the pumpkins that the kids and I made today. We discussed what they each wanted to do and looked up ideas prior to starting. The above picture is the final project. I can't wait to see how they look all lit up.

My son helped me pick out pumpkins and of course he picked the biggest ones he could find. If you scroll down to the last picture you can see how big these pumpkins are compared to my mosaic pumpkin.

This was their project and I wanted them to complete as much of it as was safe for them to do and had the attention span to do. This was the first year my daughter did the carving on her own using a pumpkin knife. I did the carving for my son. Before they carved I had them draw the jack'o'lantern features on the pumpkin with a permanent marker. Then I know exactly what they want and where they want it (less arguments!)

They normally like to do all of their projects on their own and do not want help from each other, but they each wanted to stick in toothpicks and hammer in nails, so they agreed to work together. Hooray for woring together!

There is something therapeutic of hammering nails in to a pumpkin. It goes in smoothly and kids can hammer it easily.

The top one is my son's design. He wanted a carrot nose and glasses (we bought a pair of sunglasses from the dollar store) and a mouth full of toothpick teeth. I have to say - making toothpick teeth is so much easier than carving out teeth.

The bottom one is my daughter's design. She thought it looked even creepier if she used the lenses from the sunglasses used for my son's jack'o'lantern in place of just carved out eyes. She wanted to use a bunch of different kinds of nails (she asked daddy what he had leftover he didn't need) and used staples as stitches.

Below you can see just how big of pumpkins that my son picked out compared to the mosaic pumpkin I made. Too learn how I made the mosaic pumpkin and see all the other crafts I made using black spray paint, read my post on Northern Cheapskate "Creative Halloween Crafts on the Cheap".