as many parents know, pumpkin carving with young children isn't a perfect moment in time, highlighted in all the parenting/design magazines. a perfectly lite room with fantastic halloween decor, cider bubbling on the stove top, and cake stands filled with all kinds of hand-made, yummy treats. ugh! at my house we're lucky if we get newspaper on the table! so here it is folks.... pumpkin carving in the real world...
STEP ONE - draw several mouth, eye and nose options for the kids to choose from. otherwise the kids will get completely overwhelmed and cry. well, that's been my experience.
STEP TWO - draw a picture of a pumpkin with their choices. after several drawings, a final pumpkin design is FINALLY chosen.
STEP THREE - clean out the pumpkins.... yuck!
STEP FOUR- carving.
dan carved cooper's pumpkin and i carved reilly's pumpkin's eyes and nose.
reilly carved her pumpkin's mouth and did a fantastic job!
before everyone gets upset... let me assure you she didn't use a knife,
but one of those handy-dandy child-proof pumpkin saws.
IT WORKED GREAT!!!!!
STEP FIVE - a little clean up work
STEP SIX - ta-da!!!!
coop made a super silly pumpkin
and reilly made a super scary pumpkin!
they were so proud of their creations
a few night shots
ok, so it wasn't a "martha stewart magazine moment", but we had fun and very few hiccups! thank goodness, max was napping, or it would have gone down differently!
note: after the work was complete reilly and i spent an hour picking the seeds out of the goo and i made some fantastic pumpkin seeds. crunchy, salty and oh-so yummy! just my luck, lucy (the dog) snagged them off the kitchen table. bye bye pumpkin seeds! ugh!!
