Today I’m sharing what I did to my second (out of four) pumpkins that I’m decorating this year! Today I did a pretty classic Jack-O-Lantern idea, with a bit of a twist. See, my 4-yr-old son is OBSESSED with The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is getting a lot of extra play- time in my house this month!

It was only fitting to carve a pumpkin in the likeness of the Pumpkin King himself!

I found this Jack Skellington template here. So print that out stat!

Remove the top of your pumpkin. (You can try this neat method that I mentioned in my first pumpkin post here.)

Remove the guts and seeds- and DON’T throw those seeds away! I am going to be sharing a tutorial on Indian spiced and cinnamon sugar roasted pumpkin seeds soon. (You can see one of my kids sneaking a handful down there ☟ )

Heck- don’t even throw the guts away! I have such a great and flavorful vegetarian stock recipe that uses squash guts- and trust me- it is worth keeping the innards for! You can check out that recipe here. I love throwing cans in the garbage may not be a huge environmentalist, but I hate wasting food!

Affix your paper to your chosen pumpkin, and use a sharp anything to trace over the pattern.

Next, go over the indentation that was left on the pumpkin with some pen. Don’t worry, we will wash the pen off later.

I really need to get a professional pumpkin-carving kit, but I’m too cheap right now, so I just used a nice, sharp paring knife to do the dirty work.  Here are some great tips on how to carve a pumpkin. Be careful and all that stuff I probably don’t need to mention. That reminds me of something funny I saw the other day:

Heh.

Anyways…

Along the same line of not wasting food, take the pieces you cut out, peel the skin off, and chop them into cubes. You can put these in the freezer until you do this to the rest of your pumpkin after they’ve had their moment in the spotlight. Pureed pumpkin is gold I tell you! I’ll have to share some of my fave pumpkin recipes too! And all the sudden I’m a food blogger… how did this happen?!?! Don’t worry, I’ll keep on crafting!

When you are cutting out the smile, it is easier to pop it out in sections, like this.

That pumpkin has his sights set on my baby! Look at that! Haahaahahaha.

After you are done carving the face, manicure the stringy or uneven bits of your pumpkin, and use a magic eraser to clean off any ink that is remaining.

We love Jack.

Seriously- We threw a Nightmare Before Christmas-themed b-day party for my son a few months ago- I painted him a button tree:

He loves it so much that when we moved to our new house he couldn’t accept his new bedroom until this was hanging on the wall.

Jack himself even made an appearance at this party:

He was a pretty nice guy… a lil too fresh…

But he could pull it off.

So happy Jack (Skellington)-O-Lantern-ing, and make sure to check back for pumpkins # 3 and 4, roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin stock, and a whole lot more pumpkinly awesomeness- which is coming soon!

~Dot