More Adventures in Pumpkin Carving

Every year I promise myself that I’m going to carve out more time to create a pumpkin masterpiece, and every year it gets harder just to find twenty minutes to get it done. I buy the pumpkins. A few days later, I’ll scoop them. And a few days after that, I finally manage to wrangle my husband into a chair, make him pick what he wants to carve, and draw the pattern for him.

The funny thing is, once I get him in the pumpkin carving frame of mind, he becomes much more ambitious about the project, and is willing to dedicate more time to it than me. Each year I pick the pattern that I want to do – the one I would carve if I had more of that nonrenewable resource called time. Then I pick a sad imposter that takes much less time and effort, and carve that.

This year, I wanted to carve a kraken. Don’t ask me why, I was going to go with Sloth from Goonies, but I woke up with my mind filled with awesome images of a kraken wrapping long, murderous tentacles around a pirate ghost ship, slowly dragging it down to the depths of the sea, never to be seen again. What I ended up carving was an angry octopus 😦

My husband decided to go with a headless horseman. So I drew a template for him, and he went to work. He ended up creating a masterpiece that puts my angry octopus to shame. He’s won his gloating rights, and I’ll have to wait until next year to reclaim my best in show pumpkin carving glory. I suppose it serves me right, but you better believe that it’s all the motivation I need to bring my A-game next year.