Pumpkin Time

Switching from SavVy Seasons to Pumpkins... yes I'm going in reverse. Here are the pumpkins I carved for the restaurant/beer bar where I work, The Bavarian Lodge. The beer glass pumpkin sits in the decorative fire place at work and the welcome pumpkin sits on the front desk.

No I won't tell you how long I spent carving them. But I will tell you they were both finished in less then 24 hours and in that time period I slept, ate, showered, waked the dogs a couple of times and drove the hour to work... so not that long! I will also tell you that I intended on carving two more small pumpkins but my wrist wouldn't allow me to carve anymore. I guess it didn't appreciate how I was using it to carve the first two... oh well!

These pumpkins should last through Halloween with a little help from water and bleach. If you soak your pumpkin for 24 hours in a bucket of water with a bit of bleach it helps kill the bacteria that causes a pumpkin to rot. The water also helps keep the pumpkin alive just like flowers! I repeat this process every couple of days and keep the pumpkins refrigerated over night when they aren't soaking. They will last for several weeks this way and look perfect. It also helps to scrape as much of the insides out as possible, even scraping into the wall of the pumpkin to remove some of the excess pulp. I also make sure to scrape out any signs of rot on the inside of the pumpkin too.

Although next week if my wrist is up to it, I would like to carve a version of this image on a pumpkin:

It is a beer coaster doodle I made a few years ago and I've wanted to put it on a pumpkin ever since.

Happy carving!