Carving Pumpkins

One of my most favorite things about Halloween is carving pumpkins. I don't know why, but I absolutely love getting my hands dirty and getting creative all at the same time. This year proved to be another fun, VERY messy experience.

MIKKELE

She is always such a girly girl drama queen when it comes to getting messy. She was a little less whiny about it this year, and dove in and got messy. Still had to have some grossed out facial expressions though. She decided she wanted to make a witch out of her pumpkin because she thought the stem looked like a long witch's nose. She even glued crazy hair on the pumpkin. Still need a witch's hat to go on it though. I always have to crack up at her and her tongue. It's always sticking out when she concentrates. One of these days she's gonna end up biting it off.

GRANT

I have never really been all that adventurous with Grant while carving pumpkins. This year, I decided I just needed to let go and let him have fun with the goop, even though I knew it was going to be a HUGE mess. He definitely proved me right. He had a great time though. He was super funny and kept trying to eat and lick the pumpkin.

At one point all the pumpkin goop fell off his tray onto the floor. He thought it was pretty funny. No matter what limitations he has, he still finds little ways to be a typical 4 1/2 year old boy.

Grant's favorite super hero is Spiderman, so I asked him if he wanted a spider carved on his pumpkin and he said "ya". Here he is with the finished product.
HALLIE
Hallie is always wanting to feel new textures, so I knew that carving pumpkins would be right up her ally. I stripped her down and stuck her in her Bumbo chair. We started by showing her her pumpkin. She basically just looked at it cross-eyed for a bit. She touched it a little bit, but mostly just sat and inspected it.
And then she found the bowl with the pumpkin goop next to her and decided she liked that better than the pumpkin itself.
So we glopped some on her tray. She had such a good time with it. First inspecting it...

And then digging in and making a big ole mess. Good thing kids and bumbo's are completely washable. Both Hallie, Grant and the bumbo and tray had to have bath's after we were done to clean the goop off of them.

Mikkele showing off the finished products. Jeremy did a Pac Man going after a Pac Man ghost and I did a barfing pumpkin. Mikkele's witch pumpkin still needs a hat, but it has the hair glued on. It looks more like a old man right now instead. We didn't carve Hallie's pumpkin since it was too little. Plus it already has character to it since it has curves like she does. :)
All light up