Fall is here and Halloween is around the corner. I can remember carving pumpkins as a kid and lighting them every night. The nights in Kentucky were cool enough to keep our pumpkins looking good until Halloween night. Now that I live in Texas, that is a different story. It is so hot here that if you place your pumpkin outside too early, it will rot right on your porch before Halloween arrives. Trust me, I experienced this myself before I learned how to enjoy a pumpkin in Texas. Carving pumpkins is a tradition that I want to share with my kids and I do not intend to give up on it just because we live in the Texas heat. There are so many kids that live here that have never carved a pumpkin, don’t let that happen to your kids. Make sure you have the pumpkin carving experience even if you do all the carving and they clean out the insides. Everyone needs to experience the feel of the inside of a pumpkin.
Here are my families tips and tricks to enjoying pumpkins in October:
- If you buy your pumpkin as soon as you see them at the store, bring it inside your house to enjoy until the week of Halloween
- You can buy pumpkin decorating kits and paint them instead of carve them
- We like to use the pumpkin carving kits but we wait until 2 or 3 days before Halloween before we carve them
- We have tried baking the seeds in the oven (They didn’t taste very good, but it was a fun experience…LOL)
- We have also planted all the seeds in the back of our house in order to grow our own pumpkin patch
- You can even decorate them like you would a snowman, using toothpicks to stick a carrot for a nose and other items to decorate your pumpkin
- We love to buy the fake, styrofoam, craft pumpkins and use the carving kits and place a flashing light inside them and reuse throughout the house every year. (These make great grandparent gifts)
What are your favorite things to do with your pumpkins? Do you prefer to carve a traditional pumpkin or use a carving kit where you can choose from different designs?