Pumpkin Carving
I have reached the grand age of 30 having never carved a pumpkin. In fact, I have never dressed up for Halloween, had a Halloween party, trick or treated or anything. My parents had zero interest in Halloween and as an adult Dave and I have never had any interest in Halloween either. But I know that Halloween s something all children seem to love now and so I want to start embracing Halloween for LP and LM’s sake and although LP is still too young to even know what time of year it is I wanted to get into the spirit of things and carve my first ever pumpkin.
I had hoped to carve pumpkins with LP but in the end I realised that it would be really messy and not the safest of things to have a three year old help you with. Instead, I decided to carve a pumpkin just for her and make the other one a more traditional pumpkin. I searched online for pumpkin stencils and came across a great site called Pumpkin Pile with hundreds of free printable templates and instructions on how to carve a pumpkin – I didn’t have a clue so thanks Pumpkin Pile for teaching me what I needed to know!
I chose Mickey Mouse for LP’s pumpkin, a easily recognisable character who LP adores! It was only after I printed it that I realised how intricate some parts were and it had a skill rating of 3 out of 5 – I’ve never carved a pumpkin, at this point I was nervous!
I cut around the stem of the pumpkin, levered out the lid and emptied out the pumpkin before cleaning it, taping the stencil to it and using a sweetcorn holder to prick a guideline around the edge of stencil. I then used our smallest kitchen knife to play dot to dot – can you tell I hadn’t even bought a pumpkin carving kit?! I was so unprepared!
But in the end Mickey Mouse appeared on the pumpkin. I still wasn’t sure whether his face would show up when I put a candle inside and turned the lights off as some of the lines weren’t very thickly carved. But I needn’t have worried. Mickey lit up bright and clear and I am still incredibly proud of that pumpkin – I’m not very crafty or imaginative and so I am proud that my pumpkin carving worked and one more thing is ticked off my bucket list!
Dave and I also carved a face into our other pumpkin and I think, for a beginner, that style of carving would be much easier than a Mickey Mouse face. I can just imagine the years to come – Superman and Batman logos are quite appealing for next year!
They are both fabulous! I didn’t know you could get printables like that – I’ll take a look, thanks x
They both look amazing!
We love pumpkin carving here, we’ve already carved our first pumpkins of the year, they went rotten so have already been binned, guess we’ll just need to do more for Halloween!
They look brilliant. I’ve also been checking out those websites for templates, but still can’t decide. I carved my first one last year – totally freehand and unplanned, but it worked. Beat you at 37!
Not sure when I’m going to get this one done, but I have bought a carving kit. Last year the only knife that would work was N’s kiddy cutter knife!
That is so good! Lucas would love that but we haven’t tried anything so ambitious. Glad you have now carved your first pumpkin too! xx
Wow, Mickey looks amazing! I’ve never carved a pumpkin either – we used swede when I was a kid!