It's pumpkin time!

Halloween is approaching and, thanks to an unexpected work trip for my wife, we have had to accelerate our preparations slightly. Last night, therefore, was pumpkin-carving time! We never really did anything for Halloween when I was a kind, so my first pumpkin carving experience had to wait until a few years ago.

In the past, we have made use of hand-drawn designs inspired by the internet. (For my first pumpkin, I was only involved in the design and my girlfriend (now wife) did the actual carving.) This year we got a pumpkin carving kit from Ocado that cam we a few designs, so we decided to use a couple of those. They were quite big but we got a couple of "monster" pumpkins from Sainsburys. Sitting on our dining room table, I think my "monster" lived up to its name!

I was a bit lazy and did not scoop the inside out as much as I should have done but I think the end result (below, left) was still pretty good. The carving tools in the pumpkin kit were pretty effective and a little less scary that hacking away with a knife or scalpel, although we still used one of the sharp pointy tools from Cait's Uni dissection kit to poke the outline of the designs. My wife remains the pumpkin champ of our house, though, as her haunted house (below, right) shows. (I'll try to get some better pictures on the night but these were just quick iPhone snaps should any evil befall our pumpkins in the meantime!)