Pumpkin Carving Extravanza 2008

For those of you that know me pretty well, you know that when it comes to Halloween one thing I get really excited about is pumpkin carving. Every year I like to try something new, and really try to out-do myself from the year before.

This is a picture of the pumpkin I carved last year.

As you can see I like to try new things. Last year I just found a USU logo and created the stencil myself to make it work with my pumpkin. I'm always looking for new ideas and creations to try on a pumpkin.

Last weekend X asked me on a date, and I was thrilled to hear that we would be carving pumpkins for our date. I don't think she knew how much I enjoyed carving, but she soon found out! X did some research and discovered that Macey's was selling pumpkins for 12 cents/lb. so we began our journey Thursday morning to find ourselves the perfect pumpkins.

At Macey's we started digging through the pumpkins and I soon realized that I was going to have to do some climbing to get to the untouched pile of pumpkins in the back. X cheered me on as I made my way to the back, climbing over the pumpkins but distributing my weight so that I wouldn't crush any of the pumpkins along the way. As I was making my way to the back I saw this really ugly and deformed pumpkin and asked X why anyone would ever want to buy a pumpkin like that. She just shrugged her shoulders and we kept looking until we found the right pumpkins for us.

Now before I go any further, you have to understand that choosing the right pumpkin is an art in and of itself. Sometimes you choose a pumpkin based on an idea of what you want to carve; other times you find a nice-looking pumpkin and decide what you want to choose based on your pumpkin. And other times a pumpkin chooses you. This was the case for me at Macey's that fateful Thursday morning, I just didn't know it yet.

After we each chose a pumpkin we walked inside the store to make our purchase. For some reason I couldn't get the ugly, deformed pumpkin out of my head. I kept reminding me of... something... We were waiting in line to pay when it finally came to me. The pumpkin looked like a giant peanut! It was large and round at the bottom, and also large and round at the top, but in the middle it kinda went in and made it look like a peanut. My mind quickly raced as I thought of what I could do with it, when my eye caught on a package of Planter's Peanuts with a big picture of Mr. Peanut on the side. Golden. I told X to wait in line and raced outside to go find my Mr. Peanut Pumpkin before anyone else could find that wonderful (ugly & deformed) pumpkin. I was glad to see that it was still sitting there in the pile, untouched.

Saturday night we went out for dinner to Panda Express, and then came back for a night of carving enjoyment. We had 3 pumpkins to carve, and only knew what was going to go on the Mr. Peanut pumpkin, so we set to work at finding designs for the other two. X came across a few sites with some really good designs, and I found one that I wanted to do. We tried to find another design that would go well with mine, but the only place we could find one was charging money to view the design. So X decided to go with a design out of the carving kit that I had purchased last year. Luckily X had her camera phone with her while we were carving so she snapped a few pictures during the night. I had to run back to my apartment to get my camera after the pumpkins were ready & lit.

Here are a couple pictures of the carving of Mr. Peanut. The pumpkin was so uniquely-shaped the it was really hard getting the stencil to conform to the surface of the pumpkin! I had to tape it up a lot to make it work just right. X thought the tape-job looked pretty pitiful so she snapped a picture for us to always remember.

Here are the final pumpkins that we carved. X did a really awesome job. This was her first time carving using a stencil, and she surprised both of us when her pumpkin turned out flawless. The window pane and spider's web were the hardest part but she did a great job! Mr. Peanut turned out better then I could've hoped for. It was hard finding a usable image online that was large enough and looked right, so I just ended up blowing up the image myself and edited it to work for what I needed it to look like. Photoshop rocks!


You might be wondering about that 3rd pumpkin I mentioned and where it is. Well, we spent so much time working hard on these pumpkins that we didn't get finished until after midnight, so I decided to finish up the 3rd pumpkin Sunday afternoon. Below are the pictures of that one... Mario!

Doesn't the light totally make a difference on that one? After we found the Mario design we tried to find one of Princess Peach, but were unsuccessful at finding any except for the one to purchase. Oh well, maybe next year. Thanks for the fun date X!