CONTROLLING Craziness: fall

Showing posts with label fall. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Pumpkin Carving with stencils

We tried something new this year with carving our pumpkins, and it worked. So many things I try don't turn out like the Pinterest perfect pictures, but this really worked. And it was easy, or at least not any harder than the previous way we carved our pumpkins.

We used an inexpensive pumpkin carving kit with tools and stencils similar to this one HERE. I've never used one of these kits before and I don't know what took me so long. Seriously, it was so much easier than using my big ol' kitchen knife. The tools in the kit are not as durable as your kitchen knives (one ended up breaking on us), so we also used a Pampered Chef safe cutter which they don't sell anymore but it was a more substantial version of the carving kit tool and worked great, even for cutting out the stem part. As for the stencils, we only used the witch one. The batman one we printed from online, and my oldest daughter drew her own design for her pumpkin.

We started out by carving out the stem and cleaning out the guts. My younger daughter was so helpful since my little guy thought the guts were gross.

I printed out the Batman logo from online, cut it out and traced it onto the pumpkin.

Using the carving tool from the pumpkin carving kit, we carved out the logo. The small knife wasn't that sharp but easily cut the design out and got in and out of the curves with no problems.

My Batman fan loved his Batman pumpkin.

Of course we had to see what it looked like at night.

My daughter wanted the witch design that was included with the pumpkin carving kit.

I'll admit, I had my doubts as to how good this would look, especially since I cut some corners and left some of the intricate details off.

But as you can see, it turned out great. Looks even better all lit up at night. My daughter also wanted to paint part of her pumpkin (after seeing her sister paint hers) so that's why the top is grey and black.

My oldest daughter planned her own design. She wanted to make a Cinderella pumpkin.

First she painted it. She couldn't find white acrylic paint and used tempera paint instead. Note: tempera paint will flake off, don't use it.

The white tempera paint was flaking off but there was no turning back. She carved out the window with Cinderella's silhouette inside.

Once again, it looks pretty lit up at night.

Anyone else try those pumpkin carving kits. We'll be saving the tools and extra stencils for next year. Can't believe I didn't do this sooner!

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Monday, October 23, 2017

Pumpkin Picking 2017

Last weekend we did our annual pumpkin picking. Every year we try to go to someplace new. You can check out where we went in previous years HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

This year we went to Smyser's Pumpkin Farm in York, PA. There were a lot of activities for the kids to do and it was one of the cheapest places we've been at only $5 per person with 4 and under being free. Like most pumpkin patches, the activities were best suited for the preschool to elementary school age kids.

The activities included in the admission price were:

playing on various play sets, slides and tractors, milking Bessie the cow, a hay bale maze, sorghum maze, corn maze, tractor ride, small petting zoo, corn box, pumpkin roll game, make your own jump rope, corn hole game, ring toss game.

My little guy took his job of steering the tractor very seriously.

The kids got a kick out of milking this cow.

My little guy wanted to do this maze all by himself. He was very good at finding all the dead ends.

The corn box was a huge hit. The little ones could have played in there for hours. Behind the corn box was the small petting zoo. They had bunnies, a calf, a sheep and some pigs. Like I said, it was small, but the kids loves getting to pet the animals.

My daughter making a jump rope.

Showing off her jump rope and pumpkin sand art necklace. A few things were an additional cost such as making a sand art necklace, pumpkin chunkin and buying food and pumpkins.

She was really good at this game.

The girls making their way through the sorghum maze.

Behind this maze you can see the pumpkin chunkin area. We didn't pay to do that, but we were able to watch whenever a pumpkin was catapulted from the trebuchet. They blew a horn to let us know it was coming.

My little man so proud of himself for navigating through the big corn maze.

Then it was time for pumpkin picking. This guy wanted the biggest wagon and wasted no time picking out a pumpkin just his size.

The pumpkins were reasonably priced too, ranging from $1 to $6. Smaller decorative pumpkins and gourds were as cheap as 4/$1.

It was a fun filled day. We stayed there for about 4 hours and that included eating lunch there. The kids had a blast and we got lots of pumpkins. Check back later this week to see how we carved them. Spoiler alert: we tried something new and it worked!

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Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Painting little pumpkins

The other day I drove by a local Amish farm and out by the road they had a little stand where they were selling pumpkins. It was one of those unmanned stands that works by the honor system. You buy what you want and leave the money in the box, in this case it was a baby wipes container. I wouldn't have even stopped if it hadn't been for the enormous pumpkin they had sitting there. My oldest has been wanting a large pumpkin and I thought this just might be it. So I parked the car and had him hop out to see how much it was.

$7.00 for an 85 pound pumpkin! We just had to get it. And by we, I mean my son picked it up and carried it to the car, then from the car to the front porch. I haven't even tried to lift that thing.

That was the biggest pumpkin they had. I think all the rest were around $1.00 or less, including those five small ones in the front of the picture below for just .05¢ each.

I ended up getting 21 pumpkins for only $13. Several of the pumpkins are going to my daughter's school for a pumpkin project they are doing in her first grade classroom. The rest are decorating my mantel. We still have to go pumpkin picking and get some good carving pumpkins.

If you want to check out how I made those wooden pumpkin blocks, check out THIS POST from last year.

We aren't going to carve these really little ones, but I still want them to look festive so we tried a few painting techniques. Spray painting them was the easiest and fastest drying method.

Here's my little guy all ready to paint.