Is It a Real Pumpkin?

October has become very popular due to Halloween and everyone gets into the spirit by decorating and wearing costumes to parties. I can’t remember when it became so acceptable for adults to wear costumes but it is certainly fun to see so much creativity on Halloween, especially if you live in a city.

For the past few years I have gotten lazy about it and only bought my son a costume for Halloween, take him to the museum to trick or treat, and didn’t do much else. This year I wanted  to do a little extra and decided to carve a pumpkin to put at my window. I believe that you only live one life so I might as well take advantage of my time and celebrate the holiday.

I have watched several scary movies and animated specials I used to watch as a child. I have also gotten into the habit of playing Ghostbusters for the Xbox 360 and Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare every October, which is very fun to do. I also watched a scary movie in the local theater earlier in the day last Halloween (Paranormal Activity 3, which sucked). Now I’m stepping it up with the pumpkin.

Who you gonna call, Biatch?!

So I was walking through the local Target several days ago and stumbled onto pumpkins. Pumpkins at Target? Apparently, they’re not real. They’re made of foam but you can still carve them like regular pumpkins.

21st century tech!

Now, I had to think hard about this because whenever I had a Jack-o-lantern, it was from real pumpkins. Wouldn’t this be too phony and not proper? However, I am guilty of buying fake Christmas trees so how is this that much different? The foam pumpkin certainly looked real. I decided to go with it because I didn’t have to worry about any rot or mold and I can keep it as long as I want.

It really can pass off as a real pumpkin.

Once I got the pumpkin, I knew that I wanted a face slightly more complicated than the regular Jack-o-lantern but still somewhat traditional. After a bit of online searching, I chose the Jack-o-lantern face used in The Nightmare Before Christmas. It certainly had a cool look to it.

Very cool.

As I started to cut the top off, little bits of powder would come off and litter the area. It reminded me of sawdust. It’s certainly something of no concern when cutting a real pumpkin, yet I didn’t have to worry about making a mess with pumpkin guts.

Already empty. Convenient!

The cutting wasn’t that hard either. I did use one of those small carving knives that come in one of those carving kits so it probably could’ve been easier if I used an adult knife. Would’ve been about ten times faster too.

“Mmmph! Mmmph!”

I really didn’t think this through when I chose the design and decided to carve it into a foam pumpkin with a kid’s knife. As I was cutting the teeth, I had to hold them with one hand and cut with the other so that I wouldn’t accidentally break one while cutting. Truth be told, it took me about a damn hour and a half to cut the mouth out. I can’t remember the last time I spent 90 minutes on something so trivial. I was actually a little tired too. Again, I should’ve used an adult knife.

I think it came out pretty good and again, it’s hard to tell that the pumpkin is not real. After I was done with the cutting I placed a small Halloween pumpkin strobe light inside and the light flashes, which is kind of an eye magnet for passerby’s. I may actually keep it for next year and maybe start a collection. If anyone else has a picture of their Jack-o-lantern, post the links in the comments. Or not.

Happy Halloween!

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