Family Pumpkin Carving For The First Time!

Well, it was the first time that my little family had done any pumpkin carving since Charming and I got married...and had kiddles. This year we decided that since we were finally in our own place, THANK YOU GOD!, we were going to do pumpkins with our girls. They were beyond excited. There was a countdown on the calendar that we did until the day that we went to go get the pumpkins. And when that day arrived it was off to Smith's Grocery Store to start picking through the pumpkins. They had already gone to the pumpkin patch with Grandpa & Grandma, and we weren't about to pay an arm and a leg for something that we were just going to hollow out and destroy...plus we got 2 pumpkins at Smith's for the price of 1 of Walmart! Woohoo! $5 saved! Then we went shopping for our tools. The girls really wanted to have their pumpkins look "pretty & nice"...and not scary. Alright...so we decided to get some of those stencils that you tape onto the pumpkins and then use the tools to etch onto the pumpkin before the carving begins. One of the lids from our many storage containers was placed on the coffee table and a large trash bag was right next to it. We were ready to get down to business! I took pictures...Charming got to do the taping, etching, carving and scooping. Rose helped me separate the seeds from all of the slimey pumpkin innards...and Grace graciously declined getting her hands all "icky & gross". It was so much fun...just watching how excited they were to be getting pumpkins. Every piece that came out of a pumkin was celebrated...I mean, EVERY piece.

Rose chose to have hers with a dragon on it...to be like "How To Train Your Dragon", her current favorite movie.

Grace chose to have...a cat. Yeah, go figure...cat girl who is going to be a leopard chose to get a cat on her pumpkin.

And then the flourescent light sticks got put in! Yeah, we decided that we were going to bypass the traditional candles...we don't need any fires and the light sticks allow us to change the colors whenever we want. And in the end here is the final outcome of our night of family bonding, scooping, sorting and carving. Unfortunately by the time Halloween hit our dragon was looking pretty frail and our kitty a bit psychotic & crazed. Once a few of those glow sticks were added... things kinda looked up a bit. Or at least our dragon looked a bit cooler with that red glow. Next year I think we're going to wait a little while longer though, perhaps the tools and carving will commence on either the 29th or 30th instead. (Maybe even the 31st) Oh well, we did pretty good for our first year though...and the kiddles LOVED it.