It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Pumpkins!

This evening, we’ll be undertaking one of my favorite family crafts — carving pumpkins. This is probably, hands down, the best part of October for me. I mean, okay, dressing up, trick or treating, those are kind of fun. But carving pumpkins? Love it.

I continue to be surprised how little the boys get into it though. They both think the insides are “gross” and don’t want to get messy. Now, these boys don’t have any trouble playing in mud or rolling around in who knows what, so it’s not as if they are always fastidious. But pumpkin guts apparently cross all kind of lines. At the end of the day, it means carving usually goes like this:

“Is it time yet? Is it time yet?” (repeat that six or seven hundred times)

“It is now, finally, time.” I saw off the top and had them scoops. “Clean out the middles.”

Two half-hearted scoops later. “This is gross. Eeeewww. Yuk. Can you do it?”

So I finish hollowing out the pumpkins. “Wanna draw a design on them?”

They draw a complicated, absolutely beautiful but impossible to carve design. I hand them the little poking things and then the saws. They saw for a little bit then, “My hand i cramping. Can you finish it?”

So after they’ve chiseled out one eye (maybe) of their pumpkin, it’s left for me to finish. I tend to simplify their designs and go forth from there.

Do I wish they enjoyed it more? Maybe…but since they don’t, I just skip buying my own pumpkin since I know I’ll end up doing theirs.

Do you like carving pumpkins?