When Pumpkins Go Bad...

Our first pumpkin carving experience was....an experience. Lucky for us, Doug's best friend, Tracey, was in from out of town celebrating Doug's birthday. I say lucky for us because come to find out Doug had never carved a pumpkin either! We let Kaitlin draw a face on the pumpkin with markers first, and then Doug and Tracey took turns cutting out their interpretation of Kaitlin's self portrait pumpkin. Perhaps next year we should opt for a pattern and not a drawing!

Mistake #1: We set ourselves up for a hard time carving by allowing a four year old to render the pumpkins face.

See what I mean? How do you cut THAT out? The boys were stumped so I suggested that they layer the cuts so that the light would shine through in different dimensions. Needless to say, I am genius. (Easy for me to say, I didn't have to do the cutting!)

In the end, Kaitlin was quite pleased with her "scary" jack-o-lantern, and that was really all that mattered!

If I were to take a picture of the pumpkin for you today, you would see that all of its' engraved orifices are completely covered over with mold. Too bad the trash man won't make his rounds again until next Monday! Apparently there was some sort of preservative we were supposed to put on the pumpkin to prevent this from happening so quickly. Guess we know now for next year!