Pumpkin Carving

My favorite fall activity is pumpkin carving. This year, my daughters were very excited to create their masterpieces. I, on the other hand, was just very pleased that they wanted to do something crafty, like me.

The hardest part of this is picking your pumpkin. Always try to get one that has a surface area good enough for your intended design. 

First we carved the top off at an angle, to make sure it would stay when put it back on.

And gutted the insides.

We printed stencils we found online and cut the negative shape with an exacto knife. Then we traced the stencils onto the pumpkins with a Sharpee, that way we could see exactly where we wanted to cut.

One of my daughters made a Jack Skellington stencil from this website:

For the Jack Skellington stencil, click here.

My other daughter is obsessed with Hello Kitty, so she used this stencil.

For the Hello Kitty stencil, click here.

Here's how the first one came out:

And the second one:

Right now they're on display in my foyer along with a light-up witch that I bought years ago. 

I like to keep it dark there so you can see the contrast.

I still can't decide which one is my favorite.

This project is really easy, and very customizable. There's so many cool, free stencils downloadable from the internet. Really, this project can go as far as you want to take it!

Thanks for reading. And please leave your comments!