31 Days of Halloween - Pumpkin Carving

If you're enjoying my Halloween posts, be sure to follow with GFC or Facebook... I'm doing another 31 Days of Halloween series this year! 

We carved our pumpkins last night.  We usually wait until just before Halloween because we don't like them to get all wilty.  But, if you pumpkins do get wilty, put them in a tub full of water for an hour or so... they'll plump right back up. Nature is a mad scientist.

This year, we added a tool to our pumpkin carving arsenal:

I found it at Walmart for under $6.  It attaches to any drill and makes gutting the inside of a pumpkin quick and easy.  The hubs gave it a try...

...he was very impressed.

We gathered our pumpkins, eleven in all, and hauled them inside.  It was a little too chilly to carve outside.  Also, we wanted to watch 'The Great Pumpkin'.

In past years we have carved more, but I've been busy this month... eleven pumpkins is plenty.

This is the first year Jonathan has carved his own pumpkin without any help.  He did a great job!

Hubbers was wrist deep in pumpkin pulp for a few hours.  He cut the bottoms out (we cut the bottoms out of the pumpkins instead of the tops, it's easier for us to light them that way), gutted them, and cleaned them up.  What a sport.

We used pumpkin carving patterns, 'cause that's how we roll. We were pretty happy with how they turned out!

This is the bottom of a pumpkin.  We put it on the ground, light the candle, and set the pumpkin on top.

Pretty little pumpkins.

I have something special planned for this pumpkin, I'll show you tomorrow!

Jonathan carved this one... didn't he do a great job?

I always, EVERY YEAR, carve a pumpkin with a spooky house.  I'm not sure why, but it's always the first one I carve.

I carved this one for Noah... it's too cute!

This last one is Henry's head.  We are all very happy that Henry will have a head.
It's almost Halloween!