Halloween is quickly approaching and are YOU ready? Of all the holidays, Halloween is probably one of my favorites. When else can you get candy, candy, candy, candy, candy... and have approval to create mischief? It is excellent.
Anyway, as part of the festivities preparing for Halloween, Crystal and I always carve pumpkins. The carving of the pumpkins is a time honored tradition that dates back to ... well... sometime long ago - which means that everyone should do it. So, go buy some pumpkins and get to carving!
Of course, the most important aspect of the pumpkin carving is choosing your face. When looking for a face to carve, we usually go to ZombiePumpkins. Zombie Pumpkins is an awesome site that offers all kinds of pumpkin stencils for a very small price. Once you join, you have the luxury of about 200 awesome designs. It is well worth the 5 bucks.
One of the major drawbacks to carving pumpkins is that pumpkins do not last very long. So, if you end up sinking about 3 hours into a piece of pumpkin art, be prepared to see a nice-n-wilted piece of pumpkin art in about 3 days. Although there are few tactics to avoid this problem (keeping the pumpkins off the ground, covering them in Vaseline, using WD-40, etc.), your pumpkin is doomed to fail within a week. As a way to combat this travesty, we actually invested in Funkins. These are basically fake pumpkins made out of foam. Usually, they cost about 40 bucks a pop, but, this year, Pottery Barn was selling them for 11 dollars each. After buying several and carving them up just as we did our real pumpkins, I have to say that I was not disappointed.
Now that I have rambled for 10 mins, here are a few pictures of our newly carved "eternal pumpkins" (taken w/ my new Digital SLR):
BOO!, carved by Crystal
The Mad Hatter, carved by Nathan
Chucky, carved by Crystal
Anyway, I had a blast carving our pumpkins. Most likely, I am going to pick up some real pumpkins when Halloween gets a little closer - just to add to the collection.
Happy Halloween!
UPDATE:
Dylan recently posted his pumpkins as Nerd Pumpkins on his blog. Check it out!