Carving & Painting

We had two Family Home Evenings in October centered around pumpkins. On Monday the 21st we carved pumpkins, and on Monday the 28th we painted pumpkins. Now that the boys are older, both activities were fairly painless and very enjoyable!!

 

Other than cutting out the handles on pumpkins, the boys did every part of the carving themselves. They cleaned them out, drew on the patterns, and carved them! This was a first for Josh and I: not having to help them draw or carve. We were so proud of them!

All the boys gathered around the table to begin the process.

Cleaning the insides out.

Ammon tracing on his pattern & Josh free-handing his.

 Kanyon didn't like any of the patterns in the carving books we had, so he also decided to draw his own, just like Josh did. He made a witch's castle. Josh and I were both so impressed with his independence and creativity!

Jonah and Micah both picked out patterns and traced them onto their pumpkins, then used the little cutter tools to carve them. Those tools have been so handy! Last year was the first year we purchased a tool carving kit, and it is sooo worth it! It is so much easier than carving pumpkins with steak knives!

 Here's our final products: Jonah--mask, Kanyon--witch's castle, Micah--dracula's castle, Ammon--ghosts, Josh--pac-man, Me--moon & stars.

 

 I had a hard time deciding on what to carve. I finally decided on a moon & stars, but wasn't sure how to implement it. I saw an image of one online, and I tried to duplicate it, but the moon's proportions were too round, and it didn't turn out like I envisioned! When I was done, the boys all asked me "what is that?" They figured it out only after I put a candle inside, and turned the lights off!

 Josh carved a smaller spotted pumpkin, and he decided to go with pac-man to make it look like it was eating the natural orange spot on the side. He was very creative! It was his easiest pumpkin-carving yet!

 

Ammon had planned on carving the large pumpkin he entered in the fair this year. We stored it in our home for nearly 2 months, but the week before we had planned on carving the pumpkins, his pumpkin rotted. So he picked a smaller pumpkin with a flat side to carve instead. The ghost pattern fit perfectly onto the flat spot. It was a cute pumpkin!

Jonah and his masked pumpkin. We all liked his pumpkin face! He did a great job!

Micah with his Dracula's Castle. It had some very fine details in the pattern, and Micah was very patient with cutting out all the little windows and doors. It looked awesome!

Kanyon and his creation of the Witch's Castle, complete with clouds at the top! We were so proud of his craftsmanship! It was the first time he's ever done it all by himself start-to-finish!

The next week we painted smaller pumpkins. Josh was busy making salami in the kitchen, and didn't want to paint. So Ammon followed his lead and said he'd rather watch football (and play with his iPod) than paint pumpkins with us, too. He's such a teenager sometimes!

So the 3 younger boys and I each picked 2 little pumpkins and set out all the supplies on the kitchen table and got to work. We painted for a couple of hours!

My two: a jack-o-lantern face, and a spotted pumpkin.

Kanyon mixed several colors together--using his hand!

He had an all black one with a pink face, and an all pink one. See the plate where he mixed colors? There was still plenty of paint left over after he was done painting!

Micah had an all-black one and a clown face one.

Jonah had a BSU one and a vampire face.

After the pumpkins dried, the boys had me help them do touch-ups, and these were the final products:
Top Row: Kanyon's black pumpkin with a pink silly sponge-bob face. Middle Row: Kanyon's pink apple and Jonah's vampire. Bottom Row: My polka-dot, Micah's Patriotic (he peeled off the clown face he originally painted and we started over), My jack-o-lantern, Jonah's BSU, and Micah's Black pumpkin with Orange stem. I thought they turned out pretty darn cute!

The boys all took mini pumpkins to school to donate to their whole classes, too. Jonah and Micah painted their pumpkins with their class at school, and Kanyon's class used stickers to decorate theirs.

The twins said they were thankful that they had practice painting the small pumpkins at home to better help them decide what to paint on their school pumpkins. Painting turned out to be a lot more time-consuming than carving, which is odd considering how much smaller these pumpkins were compared to the larger ones we carved! I'm so grateful we spent fun time as a family decorating the pumpkins that we worked on growing all summer together!