Pumpkin Carving Alternatives

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Halloween is just around the corner and pumpkins are filling every available space at various grocery stores, home improvement centers, and cider mills. I love seeing all the pumpkins lined up just waiting to be taken home to be carved or simply to adorn a front porch. I love carving pumpkins. I enjoy the earthy smell, pulling the gooey goodness out from the inside, roasting the seeds, and then munching them while you sit back and enjoy the glowing face of your Jack-O’Lantern.

Unfortunately, my son really doesn’t get into all that and it really seems pointless to go to the trouble. Last year I ended up carving a pumpkin and eating the seeds all by myself. (Not very fun!) This year I had to come up with a better idea to involve my son.

I headed over to the local craft store and looked for some inspiration for our pumpkins. The first thing I saw was glow-in-the-dark acrylic paint. Perfect! Then I saw glow-in-the-dark spiders. I bought one pack of those and then a pack of black spiders. I found the coolest googly eyes that were orange, purple, and green instead of the traditional black. Very fun! I’m a big fan of my glue gun and normally would have used that to adhere the spiders and eyes to the pumpkins, but knowing that I wanted my son to help, I went ahead and purchased Glue Dots for easy sticking.

I brought everything home and showed my son what I picked out. Lucky for me, he got really excited to decorate his pumpkins. Everything worked out great, but we needed multiple coats of the glow-in-the-dark paint, which never got applied due to the 2 minute attention span of a preschooler. They do have a faint glow, but I think you could make a really awesome design using a few layers of paint instead of just one. The Glue Dots didn’t work as great as I had hoped, but as long as we don’t touch the spiders too much then they stay on perfectly. Overall, we are very happy with our pumpkins this year!

If your child doesn’t enjoy the traditional pumpkin carving, then tailor the activity to their interests. We really had a great time and there was way less mess. Fun times + less mess = happy mama!