This year for Halloween, I wasn’t quite ready to let the kids go at their pumpkins with knives, even those kid-safe tiny pumpkin carving ones. And besides, if you keep your pumpkins whole, they won’t begin to rot like they do when you cut them, so you can enjoy them for a longer time!
The kids absolutely loved decorating their little no-carve Halloween pumpkins.
Joseph glued googly eyes all over his. That ended up being my favorite one! It reminds me of those bumpy winter squashes… except… it’s watching us.
Anneliese’s is covered with pretend gems. She thinks it is VERY fancy.
I painted mine with two coats of chalkboard paint. My plan was to have the kids take turns drawing faces on it with chalk. But regular chalk scratched off the paint more than it drew on it. So sad! So I used chalkboard markers to make a face, but the round shape of the pumpkin made the chalk paint drip and it wasn’t as precise as I wanted it to be… I had something cuter in mind. Still, the kids think it’s adorable, and they want it “looking at them” during dinner time. 
We might still do a big jack-o-lantern closer to the Big Day, but I’m so glad we did this little project too.
Benefits of doing the little no-carve Halloween pumpkins this way:
- As I mentioned before, NOT cutting our pumpkins will keep them from rotting so quickly, and we’ll be able to enjoy them for a long time.
- The pumpkins are very small, so we can display all 3 of them as a centerpiece even on our small dining table.
- The kids can carry their pumpkins around the house with them and play with them.
- The kids definitely feel pride in the work they did to decorate their no-carve pumpkins. They each worked on their pumpkin in several sessions of carefully selecting, placing, and gluing their decorations.
- No one was injured by a serrated pumpkin-carving blade. Seriously.
Another benefit to decorating with these is that we won’t have to store them all year waiting for next Halloween. When we move at Christmas, we won’t have to pack them and take them with us across the country.
I’m all for decorating and having fun, but I also like keeping the clutter out of our house.
If you feel the same way, you’ll also enjoy my ideas for having a clutter-free Halloween over at So Damn Domestic.
2 Comments
We are a little behind on carving/decorating our pumpkins this year but we are going to try to do them tonight and I love the idea of just decorating them for less mess! Brilliant, especially when you have 3 little boys!
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