The Powertool Pumpkin

Tonight we went to Colette's annual pumpkin carving party. This year it was combined with her friend Suzanne's costume party, which was very entertaining for us carvers. There seems to be two kinds of folks at this party - people who carved pumpkins, and people who dressed up and couldn't carve pumpkins because of how uncomfortable or unwieldy their costumes were!
This year I decided to make pumpkin carving easier. Especially the cleaning out part, always time consuming and these days too difficult for me to do with my hands that are sensitive to cold and also have difficulty gripping hand tools. Partly inspired by a carving tool I saw last year, but too late to order it to actually use, and partly inspired by a segment on The Today Show, we packed up the jig saw, power drill, extra batteries, two spade bits, and the egg beaters from the hand mixer. And stopped to buy a couple of pumpkins.



I think this was the quickest pumpkin carving I have ever done. I made a "pumpkin lantern", something I saw on the Martha Stewart Show. We used the jig saw to cut the top off, the egg beater attached to the drill to clean out the insides, and then I used two sizes of spade bits and free-handed holes around the pumpkin. I tried to do a pattern, but without being anal, it looks cool without being "perfect".

In fact, I was done and back inside well before dark. Which is why there are no pictures of me carving - everyone's hands were too goopy and I was the first one done.

I used to do original pictures, then the templates starting coming out a few years ago and one year I even did a double carving where you had a picture on the front and a second cutout on the back of the pumpkin that would cast a big shadow on the wall of the house behind it. This pumpkin lantern was the best I could do this year. Next, I will be contemplating not having a Christmas tree either. (My pumpkin is the one on the far left.)

Steve carved the BMW logo artfully into his - as you can see the pumpkin is not cut, but rather the skin is scraped off to let some light thru in different amounts. It is a neat technique. Leave it to my husband to do something about his car.

Sophia was sporting her jack-o'-lantern sweatshirt. It was cold out, she was also bundled inside one of her snugglesax when we were outside (she would not stay inside without us.)

Here's Sophia in the back of the MINI as we head for home, flanked by our two pieces of squash art.

Now we're going to go put them outside so we can enjoy them when we come back from walking the dog!

Happy Halloween everyone! Thanks for a great party, Colette!