Who Needs a Pumpkin?

Every year about this time I talk up myself on how this will be the year I carve a pumpkin. And every year I conveniently let the time pass and "forget" about it. Mainly because, I'll be honest, carving pumpkins can be a real pain. When you're a kid, mom or dad is ever so helpful by taking off the top for you. Then you are given the joy of ripping out the cold, slippery insides of the it. After approximately 2 hours your entire upper torso is sticky and there are pumpkin guts just about everywhere other than the newspaper you laid out. Then with those gooey hands you're given a little, blunt "safety" knife and told to carve a pumpkin. You can barely get the knife out after your first plunge without the handle breaking off. Sounds like an awesome way to spend a Saturday night, right? The icing on the cake were when the nimrods down the way would be ever so kind to put your pathetic, one-eyed crooked-mouth pumpkin out of it's misery by smashing it. Personally, this pumpkin is a little more my style.


This surely instilled fear in many pumpkins.

I honestly can't recall the last time I carved a pumpkin. I think I was in middle-school, maybe. Or did I paint one instead? Either way, it became way easier just to buy a pumpkin and put it on the front porch. Then if someone did smash it, I could at least hope that they would be speckled with pumpkin guts instead of me.

Dimitri Tsykalov has the right idea. He backed away from the whole idea that carving was only for pumpkins... or wood or clay. Instead he uses other veggies, and even fruit, as his medium. This article about him is from the DailyMail . Being that Halloween is the next major holiday, I suggest you take a look at it. It will probably put your pumpkin to shame, but maybe you'll feel inspired to carve something else.