101: “Jack”-o-lantern

I started this 101 in 1,001 project to get myself motivated to do things I hadn’t done before… to get outside and enjoy my life. Tonight, I carved my first pumpkin. For some reason, I always let my parents do the pumpkin carving. Well, that was on years that we actually did carve pumpkins… more often than not they wound up smashed all over our front yard, so we stopped making them. Well, I didn’t want to carve the regular triangle-eyed two-toothed pumpkin, so I decided to go for a more interesting face– that of Jack from Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas.

Well, let me tell you. Carving pumpkins is NOT that easy. First you have to cut the bad boy open and scoop out all the nasty goop and seeds inside.

So scoop I did. I didn’t have any fancy tools, so I used a regular steak knife and a spoon. It was tough, but it worked. Then I outlined where I wanted to carve with a regular Crayola marker because I didn’t have a Sharpie. I forgot to take a picture of that part, but you can see my sketches around the edges of his eyes and such. After I had him sort of sketched, I carved his face out with a paring knife.

It’s really hard to cut those teeth. In fact, I accidentally punched one out, and it’s currently being held in place with a nail, because I didn’t have any toothpicks. Oh, well, it seems to hold it in place!

On the right is Sam’s pumpkin. We’ll just call him AngryPumpkin, since he didn’t quite turn out right. 😉 Oh, well. He’s still cute!