It’s pumpkin carving time!  After having plenty of time to come up with some ideas, Hunter and I picked out our pumpkins  to carve.  I was excited to get started after collecting ideas from everyone –> Hunter decided to do something Clemson related, and I was going to carve the Ravenel Bridge in Charleston.

After I gutted the pumpkin and cleaned out the inside, I picked the perfect side and drew my design on the pumpkin with a pink marker.

Then it was time to carve!  My pumpkin was a mixture of carving and shaving, so I made sure to have notes of what was what on my design so I wouldn’t mess up.  I started shaving out some of the areas, leaving orange where I needed it, and other areas yellow.

I completely carved out areas for the sky, and shaved the “water.”  Once the main image was there, I touched up a lot of areas, trying to get everything to be smooth and look good.  Then I tested it out by lighting a candle inside and seeing what it looked like!  The idea was for the candle light to be the sun… we’ll see how well that is actually executed though.  Maybe I got a little crazy with the shaving…

Not perfect, but I’m happy with it!  Like everything new in the house, Cleo had to check it out too..I was a little nervous that the pumpkin was going to dry out before Halloween, so I used a few preservation techniques that I found online to keep it fresh.

• Soak your pumpkin in cold water for 1-2 hours, then cover the cut edges in Vaseline to keep the moisture in.
• Spray the pumpkin with a water / Clorox mix (~1 part Clorox to 5 parts water) daily.

We’ll see how well they work.. The pumpkin just needs to make it until Friday!  Happy Halloween!