Hey everyone. Troy here with our Halloween update.
Our family had a great time last night preparing for Halloween. This year we bought two pumpkins for carving for all the trick-o-treaters to enjoy. “Why two?” you ask. Simple, more roasted pumpkin seeds. Yummy goodness all the way around.
This was the first year I got a little more creative with the pumpkin carving. I asked my followers on Twitter for a place to find some great pumpkin templates. We found some Pumpkin Carving Stencils at Hershey’s trickortreats.com site that were free, looked awesome and best of all seemed like a they required only moderate skill and simple planning to create the perfect jack-o-lantern. The kids picked the ideas and I got to work creating my masterpieces!
Since these designs were not your traditional scary face that can be both planned and carved at the same time, a little design and planning were required. Which I think you’ll agree was well worth the extra 10 minutes.
I did learn a couple of things about carving intricate patterns on live vegetables.
Pumpkin Carving Steps and Tips
1. Draw out or print out the design and make sure it’s full size.
2. Tape the stencil to the pumpkin. This is harder than it seems at first because the stencil is flat and the pumpkin is rounded which causes the picture to fold in on itself slightly at various points around the edge.
3. Use a pencil to poke holes to outline the drawing.
4. Carve using a sharp knife. I used a paring knife which was perfect for the whole project.
5. Carve slowly starting with the middle of the design and work your way outward. I started carving the tree on the edge and left the face until last. But this made that part a MUCH more delicate procedure because by then all the parts I had already removed made the whole structure weaker.
6. Carve the small intricate parts before carving out the huge chunks for the same reason as listed in number 5.
Of course we roasted and enjoyed the seeds that night. We don’t make pumpkin pie, but all the pumpkin innards and scraps will be put to good use feeding the worms to make our organic compost. Gotta love being green.
We wish all of you a fun and safe Halloween. Remember to check out the two shows we posted on about what you need to know about Halloween.
The Real Parenting Show, Episode 007: Halloween Tips
Moms Everywhere Show 015: What you NEED to know about Halloween Candy
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