With Plenty of Paper: Pumpkin Carving

For the last few years I've been challenging myself to carve a pumpkin or two. And each year I push myself to do a little bit harder design than the year before. Last year it was a couple designs I got in a stencil book from Target. This year the idea popped into my head to do a Pomeranian design, in honor of our two poms. So, I searched online and managed to find a template here at the Better Homes and Gardens site. They also have a bunch of other dog breeds if you want to craft a pumpkin after your own fuzzy friend.

So, I picked up a pumpkin. Often times that's difficult, especially when you get them from a grocery store. You have to decide which pumpkins are the best and dig through a few less than worthy pumpkins to find that perfect one with a nice shiny side for carving.

Gutted out the pumpkin, roasted the pumpkin seeds for a delicious snack, then the carving began.

Gooey guts, seeds, pumpkin and my knife of choice.

Perhaps the hardest part was fixing a flat piece of paper onto a round pumpkin. With a mile's worth of masking tape and a lot of patience (and maybe a few curses) I managed to get it to lay fairly flat on the pumpkin. Then I took a floral pin and poked the design into the pumpkin. Honestly, that was tedious and frustrating.

Then you begin carving. The template called for just skimming off the skin of the pumpkin in some places, which is actually easier than carving all the way through. Since the template was a little smooshed in places I found myself improvising in some places where the pin pricks were not lined up right, or were not visible enough.

Then, after 2 and a half hours, a sore arm, stopping now and then to help my dad put up dry wall, the task was complete. With only the knife seen in the above pictures, I had a pumpkin with a cute little Pomeranian face. So, if you have a sick need to torture yourself by carving elaborate designs into pumpkins, just to post them on a Facebook and rot on your porch within a couple weeks, go check out those dog stencils. It will be kind of a blast.