What’s a good blogtober schedule without a dive into carving pumpkins? It certainly isn’t much of one. We’re getting later in the month now, and with that, we’re growing closer and closer to the big, capital-h Halloween on the 31st. I don’t know about you, but one of the most integral parts of Halloween is the carving of pumpkins, almost more so than trick or treating or making everything pumpkin flavoured. Of course, in 2020 Halloween’s trick or treating (at least where we live) is looking increasingly unlikely, and even Halloween parties are – in certain parts of the UK – to be done under a lot of heavy restrictions.
As I wrote out earlier in the month, we went out to a relatively local pumpkin patch (Marsh’s Farm) earlier in the year. We had a great time, and there was a massive variety far beyond places where I’ve been along to before. For a start, it was great to see more than just the standard orange pumpkins – and with supermarkets stocking various squashes and munchkin varieties, it was great to see much more. Size of pumpkin was definitely a major influence on the children’s decisions when it came to grabbing their squashes, and that certainly gave us a bit more to consider when it came to the design and execution of our carvings.
There’s nothing quite like having a row of pumpkins to welcome guests, or, indeed, the mailman, and I think that we all did a great job at the carving this time around. The secret, as it were, is in stencilling out the shapes before you even carve out the cap of the squash – it just gives you a better idea of what you’re working with. Stencilling out also works great for younger members of the family, as none of the kids should really be handed a knife and left to cut on their own! Also, as is the case with one of our pumpkins, some squashes don’t actually rest in the classic, flat bottomed way.
We went for a variety of designs, from Jupiter’s traditional, jagged-teethed creation on a short, green squash, to my tribute to Earthbound’s Mr Saturn – arguably one of the strangest characters in one of the strangest RPGs of its time. Everybody had a massive amount of fun, and where we were much more organised than last year we also saved some of the pumpkin seeds so that we could roast them as snacks.
One of the risks of getting pumpkins from a patch is the density of them. Jupiter informed me this year that there is a major difference between cooking pumpkins and carving pumpkins – all while she ended up picking a cooking pumpkin to carve. The flesh was much thicker, the “meat” inside denser, and it took her a lot of time to cut through it, especially compared to the rest of us! We all really enjoyed our pumpkins and they’ve looked great at the front of our home.
This post is apart of our Blogtober series, all with a Halloween or Autumn theme.
I love how these came out! Great post.
It was so much fun!
We will be carving our pumpkins later this week. I am looking forward to it, we always have a lot of fun x
I hope you do!
We usually go to a spooky pumpkin carving event held in a tent at a local farm but it’s cancelled this year. We all really love pumpkin carving though and we often end up with a theme for our pumpkins (generally Pokemon!) I think you are brave to do them on the kitchen table!
We don’t have another table to do it! lol! Having a theme sounds fun.