Pumpkin Nouveau

Tonight was the annual carving of the pumpkins, but with a twist. Daniel and Nathan decided, after viewing some funky looking pumpkins in a magazine, to go a slightly different direction this year. Luckily for me, they took the idea and made it their own. Daniel went with the half carved-half decorated approach while Nathan was a decorating purist. End result: two pretty crazy looking pumpkins.


Nathan decided weeks ago that his pumpkin was going to have glasses, so upon discovering that his 3D glasses were too small to fit his huge pumpkin ("Look at the size of that boy's head. It's like an orange on a toothpick.") he fashioned his own out of pipe cleaners. Pipe cleaners also created a giant nose, a mustache, cheeks, ears, hair growing out of the ears (that's those two antenna-like protuberances near the ears), a hat, and squiggly hair. (See Arrin, I told you we would use those pipe cleaners!) After beginning on the white hair (our color choices were limited), Nathan decided his pumpkin was an old man. About five minutes later it became Grandpa.

Daniel carved a nose and a scary mouth, made glasses, and stuck some white and silver hair on the back of his pumpkin. In opposition to the typical dynamic between Daniel and Nathan, Nathan forged ahead with his own ideas and Daniel copied Nathan with his glasses and hair creation. It was actually very refreshing to see Nathan give a burst of independence instead of waiting for Daniel to take the lead.

Once Nathan discarded the 3D glasses, Matthew made good use of them. ("I'm too sexy for these glasses . . .")

We finished up the evening with some pumpkin cookies. I even pressed raisins into them to make them look like jack-o-lanterns, but since the cookies were not actually orange (Home bottled pumpkin doesn't have that fab color that store bought does, but it is oh so tasty!), they just ended up looking like freakishly tan smiley faces. Next time I'll have to add a bit of orange food coloring to the dough!