Punkins!

Almost on the same level of craziness as me demanding to paint all our bathrooms different colors, the other day I demanded that we carve pumpkins for Halloween since we now have our own house & porch to decorate.  :)  So down to the farmer's market we trudged to pick out our pumpkins.  John said he wanted to make an "ugly" jack-o-lantern, and I had been playing around with patterns online and had found a nifty bat design.

Let's just say that I can't remember ever having carved a pumpkin before... and it is harder than one would think!  Why do we let small children do this?  I mean, wielding unwieldy knives, butchering squash  in the kitchen? Who said this was safe? (John thinks he threw out his wrist from carving his pumpkin)

Our pumpkins looking fabulous the same day we carved them.  I have found conflicting reports about how long they will last, but John has admitted that we can carve new ones next weekend before Halloween if these ones get funky and gross.  Which may be quite probable because our front porch is in direct sunlight and they are getting baked each afternoon.  Already, my bat has lost the tops of his ears due to shrivelage.  :(

There are numerous FABulous designs that seem all the more fabulous now that I know how hard it is to carve a pumpkin.  Spookmaster and The Pumpkin Lady have some good "basic" ones (most are above my skill level!), Zombie Pumpkins ups the ante a bit in regards to detail, and then there are the "extreme pumpkin" contests that go above and beyond anything I've ever seen!  (That second link is from the winner of the Food Network Challenge for Pumpkin Carving... which we coincidentally saw on tv the same night as we carved our own pumpkins, and felt highly intimidated!)