The Kriz Family

Pumpkin Carving

We got our pumpkins over a month ago, and we are finally carving them to get ready for Halloween tomorrow.  We had three to carve, and we decided to be a little adventurous this year and try our hand at some “sculpting”, rather than just cutting holes in the pumpkins (though I have to say, we’ve had some pretty cool pumpkins in the past). This was probably not the time to try it, being that we didn’t get started til about 9pm the day before Halloween, but I said we were being adventurous, right?? We have 3 pumpkins, and my Dad offered to carve one, while Heidi and I each took one. We’ll have this done in no time.

The sculpting was more involved than I thought. We had some simple things we wanted to sculpt – an Elmo face and a Mickey Mouse face (which we think Lukas will go nuts over), and everything I read just said to cut about a half inch into the skin of the pumpkin and peel it away. Right… After trying many different tools for “peeling” away the skin – none of them very successful, and all very time consuming – I decided to bring out the Dremel tool and get to work with a router bit. I felt like Tim Taylor from Tool Time, getting out power tools to carve a pumpkin. That did the trick, but what a mess! We had to wipe down the table, chairs, the walls, and mop the floor after we were done. Not to mention the shavings in our hair, on our clothes, pretty much everywhere. Note for next year – do this outside, and wear a poncho.

I don’t have the pumpkin pictures yet, but here are a few others from the night.

Here’s Dad with his pumpkin. We were glad to have his help carving this year!

Taking a break from carving to pose for the camera.

Jim hard at work "sculpting" Mickey Mouse

A Dremel (with extension) and a couple router bits – pretty standard pumpkin carving tools, right?