They have a Trunk-or-Treat at the park in late October, and Kate wanted to participate. She bought 140 Little Hugs juice containers to give out, and she wanted to decorate. The decoration will be pretty minimal; we bought a few cheap pumpkin yard ornaments and two pumpkins to carve.

Carving jack-o-lanterns has changed a lot over the years. There are professional pumpkin carvers that scrape away the pumpkin flesh to different thickness to make 3D pumpkin faces and scenes. Some of their work is pretty amazing.

It has been a few years since the last time we carved pumpkins, and this year we tried to do something a little different than the past. Kate spent several days agonizing over what she was going to do, but John was a more lackadaisical. He drew out a few designs before saying, “Meh”, and just picked one. They both came out great, but you would be hard pressed to pick more different styles.

These are the designs that Kate drew while deciding on her pumpkin.

These are the weapons of the (very amateur) pumpkin carver. Kate’s tools were fairly basic. No razor blades for her.

And here is some of the process of the pumpkin carving and assembly. John used a razor blade to cut flames and teeth into the pumpkin.

Kate is not a free a hand artist. So, she created cutouts and applied them to the pumpkin using tape. Finally, outlined the cutout using a black sharpie onto the pumpkin. Good news is that the marker comes off with rubbing alcohol.

Kate used needle nose pliers to add the toothpick teeth.

Kate then grabbed a celery stalk from the refrigerator and made a celery stalk person that was bit in half by the pumpkin. The teeth and torso were painted with blood splatter 🙂

The trunk-or-treat is during the late afternoon and early evening, so it will still be light. (It might be raining too.) The pumpkins will be seen in the daylight, so this is what the pumpkins will look like during the trunk-or-treat.

This is what they will look like at night with a white light. John’s design wraps around enough of the pumpkin that you need an upper and lower angle to see the lighting properly.

And this is what they look like with a red light. The red light is dimmer than the white light. With John’s pumpkin, the picture looses the flame detail or washes the red out to almost white, depending on the exposure.

And if you forget you have a very long exposure time, you get this kind of spooky effect. It looks like something you would see on those terrible ghost hunter TV shows or a Scooby-Doo Cartoon.

And finally, the required selfie!!