Batty for Jackolanterns

We carved our first jackolantern with Luke this year. I don't think DH and I have carved one since before he was born, maybe even not since we moved into this house. I didn't even really intend to do it this year, but when his school asked us to buy pumpkins to bring in for their fall festival, it seemed silly not to go ahead and buy one for ourselves. I also didn't want to carve it too early and risk a catastrophe, so we waited until the weekend before Halloween to cut in.



Luke had no idea what to expect!



"Eww! How you get that out?" Well, my dear, you scrape. We did buy one of the pumpkin carving kits, and in the past the scrapers have worked really well. This one had a serrated edge on it, though, and I didn't like it at all. We used a very thin-edged large spoon instead, and it worked brilliantly.



I actually thought I would end up doing the pumpkin, but DH insisted he should do it while I cooked dinner. Um, okay. I don't think I've ever seen DH do anything "crafty" in my life, and I know he's never used one of the carving kits. But he really wanted to do it, so I let him. Other than a little of the initial internal scraping, the only other thing I did was apply the pattern.



I do not recall where I got this pattern from. It was a link I found on Twitter earlier in the week. I liked that it was a very effective silhouette but still very very simple. Plus Luke has been really into bats lately, so I thought it would be perfect. The most complex part was the pupil of the eyes, and I knew that if that proved to be too intricate that making the eyes perfectly round would be just fine. So DH set to work.



Here he is popping out the first piece.



And here it is all finished. The only other thing I did was clean up some of the strings inside once DH was done, since his arm was tired. Otherwise, DH did it all. Luke thought it was "so cool!" LOL



It really does look fabulous. Great job, honey! I think *you* get to do all the pumpkin carving from now on.



Currently feeling: ready for fright night