Carving Pumpkins

I think I've probably mentioned in the past that carving pumpkins is not my thing. Once when I was little (and I only remember doing this once!) I actually tried to carve a pumpkin. But nobody told me to cut the top on an angle so of course the first thing that happened was my lid fell in on my masterpiece, effectively ruining it as a Jack-o-Lantern. Since that day I have not been interested in trying again.

Oh, I have painted pumpkins and stuck stickers on them, but the actual carving I will leave to my sweetie and the kids. In all honesty, I would rather be in charge of the cleanup.

So tonight was our night to carve pumpkins. I know, it's a little earlier than we generally do it, and my sweetie was worried that they might be yucky by Thursday, but it was our only answer. Tomorrow night is the big BSA Production at the Conference Center where the Dog Walker is participating in the Eagle Scout choir and that will take the entire evening.

Then they just announced that Wednesday night is the big pep rally for Sport's football team, and we have tried to carve them on Halloween, but the kids are too distracted with the idea of getting out there and gathering those free treats so it never quite works out.

I warned my sweetie that he would be in charge of this messy activity for FHE, but I wanted to try to make it a little easier on him. We had seen this new tool advertised that was supposed to pull the guts out of a pumpkin much quicker than the old spoon method. I heard that I could buy one at WalMart, but they had never heard of it, so I headed for the Farmer's Market and paid about $11. They told me this drill attachment was developed in Utah just for pumpkins.

After cleaning up dinner, we covered the table in newspaper and my sweetie cut the top from the first pumpkin, on an angle, of course. He attached our fancy new tool to his drill and without reading the instructions, he turned it on high. Pumpkin guts were flying everywhere before I convinced him to look at the packaging. After a little more practice, he degutted the rest of the pumpkins with relative ease. I'm not sure it was worth $11, but it did seem to make the job easier.

All lit up!

The kids drew fancy designs on their pumpkins and started cutting. Curly was so proud of his cute pumpkin face! Sport turned his into a football, of course, Princess a ballerina, and Prima Donna attempted to make the castle from Tangled. She did a pretty good job except there was not enough support and she collapsed the back.

All in all they did a terrific job! The mess was pretty minimal except for the random pumpkin guts on the wall and some of the chairs likely from the initial run of the drill attachment. It only took me about half an hour to clean up, not bad for carving 9 pumpkins!