Pumpkin Decorating

How did it get to be January already?! Obviously, I've taken a bit of a hiatus in my blogging lately. Hopefully I can catch back up a bit in 2019. I'll pick up where I left off-- with October pumpkins!

Pumpkin Decorating

Cody and Jaden's school library holds an annual contest in October-- Pumpkin Character Decorating. The only rules are that the pumpkin cannot be carved or impaled in any way (a cut pumpkin brings mold pronto here in our climate!), and that it has to be decorated like a character from a book. This is the first year the boys participated in the contest. They reminded me about it repeatedly and were so eager to begin their pumpkins! Cody painted his like the Ninjago character Lloyd (not pictured on the cover of his book).

Jaden looked through various ideas online to come up with his idea and finally landed on Arthur. We worked hard to find just the right pumpkin to match Arthur's head shape! Both boys were so proud to bring their pumpkins to school on the first day the contest opened. I was very proud of them for completing their projects with very little guidance from me. Neither boy ended up winning a prize, but they both sounded excited about making another character pumpkin next year.

Pumpkin Carving

Just a few days before Halloween, we carved a couple pumpkins as a family. For the first time ever, Cody and Jaden actually wanted to take part in all steps of the process. It made for such an enjoyable carving experience!

Neither boy was thrilled about reaching into the pumpkin, but both of them willingly used a pumpkin scraper to clean out as much goop as they could.

Adley carefully observed every step of the process and even tested out some of our pumpkin tools for herself! We actually bought a pumpkin for Adley too, but then ended up deciding it was too much trouble to carve one for her. She just got to play instead. :)

We used our favorite website, thepumpkinlady.com, to find free carving templates for the boys. They enjoyed scrolling through the many various faces on this amazing site. Cody chose a pattern called "Help Me," which he decided to rename Hutson.

Jaden wanted a "scary face" for his pumpkin, and finally settled on the template called Chuck.

Our first step-- a new idea I found this year!-- was to use a push pin to poke small holes all along the lines of the template. Then, when we took off the paper, we sprinkled flour on the pumpkin so the dots were super easy to see. We just created our own dot-to-dot picture!

This process made it SO easy for Cody and Jaden to independently follow the lines of their pattern. They were quite proud of themselves for being able to carve the entire thing!

Here is Cody's completed Hutson...

  

...and Jaden's pumpkin Chuck.

Nicely done, boys!