Halloween Fun!

Hiya friends,
So I decided to join the pumpkin carving contest at work for 2 reasons:
1) It seems like something I would have been too scared to do before, and I am trying to stop fear from making my decisions. Boooyah.
2) I have never actually carved a pumpkin, so it was my new thing of the day!

Now the truth is, I checked in with my momma, and I technically have helped her "carve" a pumpkin a long time ago, but that mostly consisted of using my tiny hands to scoop out the seeds and goop. I was not allowed to carve the pumpkin, so I have never actually done it. It counts!

So, yes, I am a virgin pumpkin carver (or was before that cherry was popped this morning...) and I had quite an adventure figuring it all out. Luckily there is plenty of internet help available!

I picked out a pumpkin at work, something a little smaller so that I wouldn't feel overwhelmed, and then searched for what kind of stencil I would like to use. Holy cow there were a million choices! I could find a stencil for anything I could think of. I decided it needed to reflect me somehow, therefore it shouldn't be too scary, or serious. I narrowed it down to a cartoon, and then stumbled upon snoopy dressed as dracula. Snoopacula. Perfect.

Now the fun part: With my computer open to Martha Stewart's "how to carve a pumpkin" page in case I got stuck, and my itunes on random, I got to work.

Before.... Isn't it a cute little pumpkin? So I cut off the top and started to scoop out the seeds. I forgot how gross this process is. Just slimy and tough to get the stuff out!

 Okay, so I got most of the goop out, but there were soooo many stringy bits left in that darn pumpkin that I could NOT get out. I had to check in with Martha and see what to do. She said to use a plastic scraper... I did not have one of those.I tried everything I could find: A spatula... no good. My knife was too long to fit in the round edges, and a spoon wasn't doing the trick. I looked around everywhere and then tried to think of what might work like a plastic scraper would, and had an idea.

I got my old international student card out of my wallet and started scraping away the inside of the pumpkin. Worked like a charm.

Well the cleaning took FOREVER, but when I finally finished, I got the design out and  tried to make it fit on a round surface, not an easy feat. I had gotten a tip at work to use push pins to make the design onto the pumpkin, so I also used them to keep it in place.

So after an hour of poking the design into the pumpkin, I finally started cutting. And it took twice as long as poking.

All was going well until I got to a really tricky bit around the mask and the eye. In retrospect, I should have done the middle of the eye BEFORE doing the outside of the eye, as it became so flimsy, that I accidentally ripped off half of the eye. Uh oh.

Okay... kind of an important part, what do I do? I assessed the situation, and realized that I had half of the eye still. I carefully cut around it, and saved the bottom half of the eye! Whew! It still looked alright, you got the basic idea. Crisis averted. I finished cutting out the pumpkin, trying to shave the lines so that they looked cleanly cut, and then I realized that I was creating what looked like spaghetti shavings all over the inside of my pumpkin! Ughh! It took quite a while to clean all of that out so that it wouldn't interfere with the light coming through the design. This pumpkin carving is a finicky business!

I finally got it all mostly cleaned out of the way inside, when I realized that I hadn't finished snoopy's ear... but given the very small amount of space I had between the edge of the cut and where I was supposed to cut out the ear, I didn't want to chance it again.... we wouldn't want an eye falling out repeat. Okay... so instead I decided to get a little creative and just shave off the inside of the ear instead so it was the yellow-y underneath colour. Yes! Well, it proved to be a little challenging, and after cutting my finger I switched to a different knife and it did the trick.

Taaadaaaaa!

With a flickering light inside, I'd say it turned out not too shabby! Now, in my head I had planned to add more to it, maybe a woodstock or some paw prints... but I decided maybe it would be best to just keep it simple. Sometimes simplicity is perfect. Plus, I finally got the yellow crap out of my nails and I think I had enough for the day.

All in all, a pretty successful first pumpkin! Now let's just see if it can hold up against the other 27 contestants at work.... ugghh! I'll let you know how it goes. And as a special bonus, I have a new found respect for the pumpkin carvers of the world! I can't believe the people who do the crazy intricate dragons and portraits and such. Good on you!

Love and kindness all.