For some reason every year, I forget what pumpkin carving entails. I think it's going to be this wonderful, short-ish family activity where everyone has a great time and we end the night with a cute Halloween movie while eating roasted pumpkin seeds.
Not so.
The reality is, it dissolved into us pleading with our kids to just touch the pumpkin guts once,
just once, and then we promised we'd hollow out the rest. So this picture with the pumpkin guts scooper was fake. Totally fake. Emerson just likes running around with the tools, and that includes the little saws. Don't worry though, we drew the line at the butcher knives we used to cut the zig-zag tops off the pumpkins.
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| "Don't make me touch the guts!" |
We finally got all four pumpkins hollowed out, and then we set about choosing designs. Sammi wanted Ariel AND Tiana AND Cinderella on hers. Mom isn't that patient, so I chose just plain Ariel for her. And did she help me carve it? No. Emerson chose some vampire demon thing for his design. Before he settled on that though, he also liked about 20 designs, so Daddy helped him choose. He sincerely wanted to help Dad carve, and he helped a little, but then both kids ended up on couch while we kept hitting "play" on another
Jake and the Neverland Pirates episode. Meanwhile, I kept grumbling about how cheap they make the little pumpkin-carving saws and tools. I swear they used to be better quality and didn't so easily bend in half. (Did I mention the night deteriorated quickly?)
About 7 hours later (ok, 2) we were finished with the kids' pumpkins. And look! They are in their jammies! Makes sense though since it seemed like it was about the middle of the night by this time.
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| Yay, Ariel! |
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| Yay, Dracula demon thing! |
So to finish out the night, we put the kids in bed and finished carving our own pumpkins. And we did have roasted pumpkin seeds, but they weren't done roasting until midnight. I'm serious. It only takes like an hour to roast them, but we had so many that they wouldn't all fit in the oven at the same time. (Now that I wrote that, it sounds like we had loose pumpkin seeds busting out the seams of our oven.) We only have 2 racks in our miniature easy-bake-size oven, and those pans were filled to capacity.
To pass the time until the blasted seeds were roasted, we read
Mockingjay together. (I know, we are so behind to not have finished the series, but we are getting there! Don't you dare spoil the ending.) Then I pulled the dang seeds out and we collapsed into bed. I think next year we might paint our pumpkins, or at least draw jack-o-lantern faces on with a Sharpie.
9 comments:
I have to admit that carving pumpkins is something I don't really miss. It always seemed like it would be such a good idea, but it took forever, it was messy, and Dad and I ended up doing most of the work because the patterns chosen by you kids were too intricate for you to do yourselves. Plus, you also hated touching the guts! But NOT carving pumpkins when you have little kids seems like kind of a crime...so what's a family to do?
This sounds just like our adventure....ugh! Tweeb left for work so I carved 4 by myself then both my saws broke (i agree with you that they used to be a lot better made). I promise we are not carving them again (only painting) until they are old enough to clean and carve them by themselves. Your pumpkins are adorable though:)
This sounds just like our adventure....ugh! Tweeb left for work so I carved 4 by myself then both my saws broke (i agree with you that they used to be a lot better made). I promise we are not carving them again (only painting) until they are old enough to clean and carve them by themselves. Your pumpkins are adorable though:)
This sounds just like our adventure....ugh! Tweeb left for work so I carved 4 by myself then both my saws broke (i agree with you that they used to be a lot better made). I promise we are not carving them again (only painting) until they are old enough to clean and carve them by themselves. Your pumpkins are adorable though:)
This sounds just like our adventure....ugh! Tweeb left for work so I carved 4 by myself then both my saws broke (i agree with you that they used to be a lot better made). I promise we are not carving them again (only painting) until they are old enough to clean and carve them by themselves. Your pumpkins are adorable though:)
Um, so we didn't carve pumpkins. What stinky parents. But you're TOTALLY right. It takes forever and those saws are awful (do they think we're carving pumpkins made out of paper mache or something?) and the designs are hard. Then the candle never looks right in there anyway or goes out because of lack of oxygen or something and before you know it, you're throwing a sad, slumped, defeated looking moldy pumpkin in the garbage can way too close to Thanksgiving.
Or is that just me?
Mel! The pumpkins look amazing! I can barely cut out a traditional jack-o-lantern face with those knives. I thoroughly enjoyed your retelling of the night. I could just imagine you saying it.
This is one of the funniest stories ever! I totally agree with your mom that carving pumpkins is something that is nice to be done with forever! And then I don't know if this is just me but the dang pumpkin guts junk stings when it gets on my skin! Craig was always just grossed out at the whole thing. Looking back to simpler times without saws and tools and scoopers when we used spoons and knives and Mason jar lids I am glad we did it and hope the kids have good memories! Although Danyette, maybe Tweeb worked on purpose! I think you are the best for doing it yourself!
Mason jar lids! That is brilliant! I'm going to remember that for next year, because I'm sure I'll fall into the same trap again.
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