My First Pumpkin

I carved my first pumpkin last night. No, really—my first pumpkin. I’ve never done one before. I’ve actually only been eye-witness to a very few pumpkin carvings in my life. Maybe—two? I actually can only think of one.

Anyway, so I carved my first pumpkin last night. Mark was shocked that it was my first one. He didn’t know that it was my first until I was well on my way of having it all gutted. I’ll be honest—it stinks. And, it’s pretty gross. But, I managed to gut it pretty well.

I wanted to make a monster, but not a “scary” monster. We just watched Monster’s, Inc. on Sunday, so Mike came to mind. I grabbed the DVD case and had a good look at him. Then I found circles of varying sizes so I could trace them: the almond extract lid, a spice bottle, a coaster, a plate, and a bowl. I traced the eye.

Mark came over to see what I was doing. I was all nervous because when I told him it was my first, he reacted like I was a freak, and he boasted that he’s done nigh onto 30 pumpkins himself. (Don’t worry, he didn’t say any of this in any degrading way—I was just ultra nervous being in the presence of someone so expert. She failed to mention that I told her all of my pumpkins suck because I am not very good and have no artistic ability. ) He said a couple things about how hard the mouth might be—so I got more nervous.

I got the face drawn on. Mark mentioned—a few times—that I should have drawn it on with a pencil. Alas—my lack of knowledge showing through again. I had drawn it on with a marker so I could see it. Oh well.

Then I started carving with Mark hovering over me. He kept shifting around me so he could see better. That made me nervous too.

Overall, I think I did a pretty fair job. Mark helped only when my hand got tired of sawing. He gave good advice. And I like it—I like my pumpkin.

(Mark was very concerned with the marker lines, so he insisted he clean them off. I taught him a trick I’ve learned somewhere along the way. I learned it about whiteboards and figured it might work with pumpkins too: color over the marker with a whiteboard marker and then erase both. It did indeed work and Mark was so impressed.)