A Small Festive Pumpkin

Halloween has come and gone, but that doesn't mean that pumpkin season has come and gone.  You can still carve pumpkins and place them around your home for a festive look that is in keeping with the season.  Here is what I did.

I visited one of the local nurseries and picked up several of these smallish pumpkins.  They had a truckload of them.

Along with a truckload of these rather "gnarly" pumpkins.

I did not get any of the gnarly pumpkins, but I did shuffle through the gourd bin and select several for decoration.  There were all sizes of gourds in this bin.  I chose mainly small ones because they work better for my purposes.

To get things started, I needed to clean out the first pumpkin.  Of course, as we know, the first thing to do is to carve around the top so that you can get inside and thoroughly clean the pumpkin.

Here we are with the top removed.  I used a large serving spoon to clean out this pumpkin and it worked like a charm.  You do not need to buy a special spoon for this.  I'm certain that you have a spoon in your kitchen that will work to get the pumpkin completely cleaned.

Our pumpkin, all cleaned out and ready to be carved.

For this project we are going to use an apple corer.  If you wanted, you could use an electric hand drill with different sized bits to make an assortment of holes of different sizes in your pumpkin, but I did not want to do that.  I wanted a uniform look with all the holes the same size.

I just started.  No particular pattern.  I went about three-quarters of the way around the pumpkin, using the apple corer in a twisting motion, until I had enough holes that I thought would let a good amount of candlelight show through.

First hole done, and I continued on.

Let's refer back, now, to what I said above about carving holes in about three-quarters of this pumpkin.  I did not carve it all the way around.  I wanted the light to reflect outward through the carved section of the pumpkin and leaving it solid in the back gave the light a background to bounce off of and reflect into the room.  This might sound way too complicated.  Bottom line - just carve about three-quarters of the pumpkin and put a candle in it.

For the candles, I used one from this assortment of LED votives I picked up at Michael's.  It worked perfectly in this little pumpkin and I did not have to worry about checking it constantly.  I like to burn real candles throughout the apartment, but for something like this, these little LED votives are the answer.