Jack-O-Lantern Time

Following the excursion of finding the perfect pumpkins, is of course the experience of carving them!

I was surprised Brian was into it this year. And by into I mean instantly picking up a carving knife and poking holes all over his pumpkin. I cut open the top of the pumpkin and asked him to clean it out with me. No way in hell was he going to put his hand in there and touch the slime.

After I labored over the cleaning of the pumpkin, I asked him to draw a face on the pumpkin. He did. I went over them to make them a bit larger and he set to cutting out the eye. He actually cut out one eye really well but then decided to cut a long line from the top of the pumpkin, through the eye, and down past the nose. Not sure what he was going for with that- it looks like a scar of some sort, but I'm guessing he was probably goign to try to make railroad tracks. I was able to redirect him and we di the rest of the face with some hand-over-hand techniques.

This was the first year Corbin was completely independent on the carving of his pumpkin. Oh, no, wait. No he wasn't. He too won't touch the "guts" of the pumpkin. In fact just looking at them can have him start in on a gag-fest. But he did cut out the top and design and cut out his face.



After he wanted me to draw him a Jack Skellington face (from The Nightmare Before Christmas) on his second pumpkin and he carved that out as well on his own.


As for me, I put in more time than I have in years on my pumpkin and really have been like a big kid ever since. Everyone that comes to my house gets asked, "Did you see my cannibal pumpkin? Huh? Huh? Did you like it? Praise me please!"

Overall, it was definitely our most successful pumpkin-carving session ever. I love that each year gets a bit better than the previous one. Makes me look forward to the future.