Pumpkin, Pumpkin

I like carving pumpkins as much as the next person...ok, maybe not. 

Since we have little kids I usually find the actual task of carving an unpleasant one 'cause I end up having to gut and carve all the pumpkins myself (while little people tell me I didn't make it scary enough) and try to keep anyone from hurting themselves or spreading pumpkins guts far and wide. 

Last year Scott was gone for Halloween too and the whole carving experience was particularly trying, so this year I decided to try something the kids could participate in more.  And something that didn't involve knives or guts.  Painting.  Here is Matthew painting his ghost pumpkin.   We spray painted some of the pumpkins (according to designs chosen by the kids) and let them dry.  Then the kids painted their designs on top.  Matthew dressed up as a ghost and wanted a ghost pumpkin to match.  The white spray paint I got didn't give great coverage, but it still looks ghost like.

Anna wanted her pumpkin to match her costume too, so she painted a ladybug pumpkin.  I thought making a ladybug pumpkin sounded fun so I spray painted two pumpkins red, one for me, one for Anna.  I was too busy trying to keep Grant out of the paint and Anna wanted to paint both so I let her.  She was very generous with the black dots.  She also gave the big pumpkin a face.  She loves painting.

I would have let Grant paint but he refused to wear a smock, so I let him decorate a pumpkin with foam alphabet stickers instead.  He liked that a lot.

 Sometimes he was confused about which side of the letter was sticky, but he persevered.

 I actually thought his pumpkin turned out pretty cool!

 Here are the kids putting on some finishing touches.

Anna decided she needed to add some other colors to her ladybug pumpkin.  She started with blue and then told me she wanted red.  I reminded her we had spray painted the entire pumpkin red, but she still wanted to add a little more.  Later she wanted to paint it "red and yellow mixed."  There is just something weird about painting a pumpkin orange.  :)  I don't question her artistic genius though.  She knows what she's doing.

 Ta Da!  Two ladybug pumpkins.  I guess the orange part must be on the other side?

And Matthew's pumpkins.  He painted a ghost (the big one) and a "baby vampire" for the little one.  I didn't get a good picture of the baby vampire's face.  I'll have to get that later.
The painting and stickering were fun.  We may try it again next year.
Matthew was disappointed when I told him I didn't want to carve all the pumpkins, so we left one big one aside to carve all together.  One I can handle.  I hope!