Carving pumpkins

Carving pumpkins is by far my favorite part of Halloween. I was pretty disappointed when the pumpkins I had purchased earlier started to shrivel up and rot, so I broke my unwritten rule and bought a couple of replacements from a cardboard box at a store. Emily was super excited to help this year and asked if we could put Lincoln down for a nap at 8:30am because I told her we could carve them when he was sleeping. :o)  She did manage to wait until after lunch.

Emily ended up playing more of a supervisor role, though, after she discovered what was actually inside the pumpkins.  This is as close as she got to touching it.  She called it "honey" because it was sticky and then later "cheese" because the little ridged scooper tool I was using shredded the pulp and made it look exactly like shredded cheddar cheese.

 

She sort of drew her own face and helped me cut it out.  This picture shows her directing me where to cut the ears.  I guess I've never really done ears on a pumpkin before, but they turned out super cute.  She decided it looked like a monkey and named it "Curious George". :o)

She was most excited about putting the candles in.  I was pretty proud of myself for digging up a random white votive candle and a purple floating flower candle left over from our wedding reception centerpieces!  I also thought my "artistic" pumpkin turned out pretty good.  Before you give me too much credit, it was a paper stencil from the carving kit.

  

It's always a little tricky taking photos of the finished product to get the full effect of the carving, but I waited until after dark and played around with some settings on our digital camera.  Happy Halloween!