Earlier today I realized that it was the day before Halloween and we still had not carved a pumpkin this year. Well, that had to be remedied.
It is a little challenging finding a nice carving pumpkin on the day before Halloween but with some perseverance it can be done...especially if you don't mind getting pumpkins with a few lumps or a squished backside.
After dinner, we dug right in.
Nicholas has always hated pumpkin guts!
But once he got going he didn't stop.
Rachel was a little grossed out too!
She actually wimped out and asked me to finish cleaning out her pumpkin for her.
We had the Pumpkin Masters Kids Carving Kit. It is a great product. You pick out your stencil which has holes punched along the pumpkin face's outline. Tape the stencil to your pumpkin and color over the holes with the enclosed black crayon. Then simply use the carving knife to punch out the holes to make the pieces perforated and punch them out. Our kids chose to just use the knife to saw along the dotted lines and the carving knife was up for the task.
Rachel had me help with the stencil and starting the first hole for the carving knife when she would start on a new area but she did all of the actual pumpkin carving herself.
She was actually quite good at carving smoothly on the dotted lines and she was quick too!
We saved all of the pumpkin seeds. We'll roast them for a yummy snack. Do you happen to have a good recipe for roasting pumpkin seeds? If so, I'd love to hear about it.
Nicholas' design was more intricate than Rachel's so he took a while to finish his.
Rachel came over to check out his work and encourage him. So sweet!
Ta Da! Here is Nicholas' pumpkin all carved.
We added the eye accents and some light. He's pretty spooky, isn't he?
The carving kit came with several choices of eyes that just poke into the pumpkin. They look really great!
Here is Rachel's with her pumpkin. She chose a sweet smiley face to make.
After our pumpkin carving was done, the kids finished getting ready for bed. Then they climbed up in our bed as Daddy read them some Halloween books.
We'll leave these guys outside our front door for a few days. I'm so impressed with how well the kids did carving these all by themselves!