Pumpkin carving

[SueC]

Has anyone bought any of those pumpkin carving kits with patterns? I'm going to attempt one of the easy ones, but I have a feeling that it is harder than it looks. I saw a cute idea in a parenting magazine that cut a hole for the mouth of a little pumpkin and stuck a pacifier in it--I plan on doing that. Any other cute ideas?

[migirl]

We've been carving pumpkins for the past few years with our pumpkin carving kits. We always have a blast doing it, and it's really easy. All you have to do is hold (or tape) the pattern against the hollowed-out pumpkin, poke holes in the pumpkin exterior to make an outline of the design, and then remove the pattern and carve out the pattern using the poked holes as a guide. The easiness/hardness just depends on how complex of a design you choose. One year DH picked a pattern that required a lot of intricate lines and detail that took him forever to do - needless to say, ever since then he's always stuck with the 'easier' patterns! There are tons of cute ideas out there, one year we did Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street. The neighbor kids loved it! Here's a bit of advice for you, though: make copies of the pattern before using it on the pumpkin so you can use it again another year. Have fun with it, are your kids helping too? I think my MIL bought a kid-friendly carving kit for my nephews to use this year.

[Michele]

I saw a picture of a pumpkin that was vomiting pumpkin guts into a fake toilet....that was pretty creative.