Keeping the Magic: Pumpkin Carving

Friends, Halloween is only three sleeps away! We are still in the amazing stage of young trick or treaters which means all the candy scored on Halloween gets mostly consumed by us. Bring on the miniature chocolate bars. Now many of you have probably already carved your pumpkins and have the front of your house all decorated for Halloween but we like to save our carving for a few days before. Being in a normally cold area, the early morning frost can do a number on those pumpkins. Pumpkin carving is yet another way that we love to show everyone how much we love our Disney. There are so many amazing pumpkin carving ideas for us Disney nerds. Take a look at this board I put together on Pinterest. A lot of these pins are linked to the Disney Family website, where there are a lot of great templates if you’re looking to print one off instead of doing free hand. Follow this link and you’ll find a wide variety of Disney characters. Each is provided with great instructions and a template. Whether you’re looking for an easy carve or something more complicated you are sure to find one that suits your front step.

Last year my husband accomplished an impressive Tinker Bell carve. Using a drill and a knife, it ended up looking amazing and he said it wasn’t too hard to do. This year our daughter requested an Elsa Pumpkin, thank goodness she didn’t ask for Moana. Our son asked for Lightning McQueen. Yesterday, we went to our grocery store and picked up two pumpkins that were roundish and large but not too large.

We then took them home. I carved out the top and the kids scooped out the insides. Okay, maybe I did the majority of the scooping, but they did more than I expected.

Next stop was the stencil stage. Hubby cut out the pics of Elsa and Lightning McQueen. I then held the pics on the pumpkins while he traced them. After this was completed, we put the kids to bed since the next part was going to involve sharp objects.

Knives, x-acto knives and power tools were used to create this year’s pumpkins. For Elsa, my husband cut out the shape with a knife and then cleaned it up with an x-acto knife. The ice magic coming out of Elsa’s hand was created by a drill using different sized bits.

Lightning McQueen took the longest. Approximately thirty minutes to simply carve, using an x-acto knife and then a knife to get the whole way through the pumpkin. Having pumpkin tools would likely make this a little easier and may save you a few minutes. But you can definitely create this pumpkin with the tools you can find on your own tool bench.

I gotta say friends, every year I am surprised by how long of a process carving a pumpkin can take. But the reward is always worth the effort. Between the planning of what to carve, the preparing of the pumpkin, carving and so on. It’s a fun tradition that I can remember looking forward to as a kid. Take the time to spend these moments with your littles or your bigs. You only get one halloween a year. I mean, carved pumpkins for Christmas would be taking the Jack Skellington angle a little too far.

And here is the end result.