Pumpkin carving

J's been wanting to carve pumpkins for some time, and this week we finally got around to it. J designed the first pumpkin's face on the BHG website. He did a pretty good job, if I do say so. He picked the second design out of the book of templates that came with our pumpkin carving tool set. It was one of the only 2 in the book that wasn't completely gorey. (Guess I didn't look at that very closely before choosing that set.)

It's been a long time since I last carved a pumpkin. I learned a few things I didn't know before. Like, carving pumpkins with your 2 and 4 year old goes much more smoothly if you do it when your 2 and 4 year old aren't actually around.

If you make a big open mouth on your pumpkin, your 2 year old will like to feed it things. Such as pens and carrots and all the seeds you just removed from said pumpkin.

You should definitely make the opening at the top wide enough to get your hand in. It makes the whole scooping out the goop process much easier. (And retrieving pens and carrots and seeds.)

If you take your 2 and 4 year old to the store to buy little lights to put inside your pumpkins, they will much prefer to play with them and may throw a fit when you try to actually put them inside the pumpkins.

And finally, if your 4 year old walks off with the marker that came with the pumpkin carving set and you can't find it when you're ready to trace the second template, a Sharpie marker is not a good substitute. Unless you're really, really good at staying right on the lines when you carve. I am not. There are a number of permanent black marks on our second pumpkin. Don't look too closely at the picture!