Pumpkin Carving 2013.

So.  I dropped off the social medias for a week there.  See last Sun we had our son's Baptism and a big party for the event.  So I was SPENT.  And needed to hibernate a bit.  Did I miss anything fun?

Lots of party pics coming but before that? One more Halloween post.  Because our pumpkins this year?  Were awesome.

Yup.

The girl got really into it this year.

Which meant Matt got really into it, too.

The dude didn't really know what to think.

But the girl... yeah.  Total creative control.  She picked which pumpkin she wanted, thought about how she wanted the pumpkin to look (scared, so with an 0 mouth), sketched out her design a couple of times until it was what she wanted, drew the sketch onto the pumpkin with washable marker, and then carved that bad boy herself.

It was kindof awesome.

I carved my usual face.  I basically do some iteration of a giant smile every year.  I'm cool with that:

The scared one is my daughter's, the big grinning one is mine.

After the kids went to bed Matt kept going with the fun.  I bought the pumpkins to use for decoration for the Baptism Party.  Yeah.....

Batman and a super creepy face totally work for a Christening, right?

My fav. pumpkin is the warty one.  I love the bumpy pumpkins and Matt's design incorporated the warts perfectly:

 He used the drill to carve the holes.  It kinof looks like his mouth was sewn together at one point.  Totally creepy.

Before we knew it it was after midnight and we were taking hilarious Vine videos of our creations.

WE ARE TOTAL GOOFBALLS.

Anyways!

Some tips that I want remember for next year:

1.)  Use gloves.  Seriously it sounds lame but once I put rubber gloves on everyone we had no issues really digging into the guts.  Made everything go much quicker!
2.)   Use the pumpkin carving tools.  We got one of those kids from the grocery store and the tools were both easy for the kids to use and small enough to carve out the details.  And yay for not letting the kids play with actual knives!
3.)  Cut an easy to put back shape for the top.  The first one we did was the basic zig zag circle.  Which means to put back you have to figure out which zag goes where. Once we went asymmetrical they became much easier to put back on.

asymmetrical top

4.)  Use a drill.  We've never drilled a pumpkin before and WOW was it fun.  Seriously fun.  Matt used it to make his face but I've seen cool versions of just dot patterns.  So many possibilities!
5.)  Use washable markers to sketch out the design on the pumpkin.  I think we usually use pencil but washable marker (like the crayola kids ones we already had on hand) were MUCH better.  You can sketch your design a million times and it just washes off!  So it's no problem to draw exactly what you want before you cut.  Awesome.

And for the super fun bonus pic - my mom making superman fly:

My parents stopped by for about 5 min on Halloween just to see the kids in costume and get some pictures.  My dad's shots of the pumpkins came out amazing:

But the kid were slightly less cooperative:

CAN WE PLEASE GO TRICK OR TREATING NOW?!

Heh.  Luckily I had already taken some great ones at the park!